Mobile technology is increasingly growing. Science has invented many things and one of the greatest inventions is mobile internet. In fact the whole internet is now in our pocket. We have the capability to visit the world wide web through just a mobile phone and as a result mobile internet users are increasing day by day. Therefore it is essential that all websites are mobile friendly.
WordPress is one of the most popular blog softwares available and many websites use it. Used by more than 18.9% of the top 10 million websites in the world (August, 2013) WordPress is mainly a software for blogs of all types. Is your blog optimized for mobile devices? If not, you’d better do this to keep the valuable mobile readers in the future. But as a newbie your question would be “How to Make a WordPress Blog Mobile Friendly?”. Through this post I am going to discuss the easiest ways to make your blog mobile friendly.
Top 3 Ways to Create a Mobile Friendly WordPress Blog
#1. Use a Responsive Theme
A responsive theme means a theme that will render automatically depending on the web browser width. For example, if you are using a device of 1280px X 720px, 640px X 240px or any dimension, the theme will load it’s responsive style sheets as per the dimension of web browsers. Using a responsive theme, you don’t need to think about mobile optimization.
You can even turn your existing WordPress theme into responsive by the help of a responsive CSS file. If you are a website developer, you could do this by yourself. Otherwise, you should contact your web developer. I would recommend you buy a high quality premium response theme from a good provider as it will ensure the best performance and you could get support from the provider.
#2. Use Mobile Themes Through Domain Mapping
To create affordable usability for your mobile visitors, you can make custom domain mapping such as m.yourdomain.com or anything else like this. Similar to setting up Facebook and Twitter. All you have to do is set up a subdomain and function it to render for mobile visitors. You also have to set your mobile theme for the subdomain. As a result, your mobile users could enjoy your blog by just visiting m.yourdomain.com. This way you don’t need to add a responsive style or anything.
#3. Use Mobile Plugins:
Here are a top list of plugins to optimize WordPress for mobile devices without much effort.
- WordPress MU Domain Mapping: It is a plugin for WordPress that can easily handle all the domain mapping processes. Those who are unable to add this manually should try this plugin.
- WPtouch: This is the best mobile plugin to optimize a site for mobile users, especially for touch screen devices. Nowadays, almost half of mobile internet users prefer to use touch Smartphones, so this plugin is highly recommended. It will generate a simple elegant theme for mobile. As per your needs you can simply customize the appearance through the settings from the WordPress Dashboard.
- WordPress Mobile Pack: This is a complete package of all mobility requirements. It has the functionality of custom switcher, themes, widgets and mobile WordPress admin panel. If you are looking to optimize your admin panel for phones, you must use this plugin.
- Jetpack: Jetpack is a must have for every single WordPress blog. It has its own plugins list integrated a nd one of these is Mobile Theme. Just install the plugin and enable the mobile theme from the Jetpack settings. That’s all you have to do. If you have already installed this plugin, just go to the settings and activate the theme functionality.
- MobilePress: It is another great mobile plugin that renders a mobile friendly version of every WordPress site or blog. There are also some friendly settings available for custom appearance. It has the custom themes functionality too.
- WordPress Mobile Edition: WordPress Mobile Edition is one of the simple plugins that has a beautiful interface for the mobile viewer. As like other plugins, it will automatically detect all devices and render a nice interface. Plugins like this one are really easy to use as well.
Now Test Your New Mobile Interface
If you have followed the steps above you have optimized your WordPress site for mobile viewers. Before going live it is recommended to test it. And it is also important to test the usability from the different devices such as iPhone, Tab, Smartphones etc. So here are some online resources where you can easily input the mobile website addresses and see the rendered interface – even from a computer.
- iPhone 4 Simulator: It is a simple mobile website simulator to test site view from iPhones. Currently iPhones are the most used among global mobile phones. So it is a must to test through this simulator.
- iPad Peek: This is a simulator to test the rendering of iPads or Tabs. These pads and tabs are bigger than phones so we should really take notice of them because a large number of people are using these all over the world.
- Opera Mobile Simulator: Using this simple simulator you will be able to view the site as on normal phones. Many people use Java based phones and this gives you a look just like a Java device.
Final Words About Optimizing WordPress Sites
In this competitive era everything needs to be perfect, however, if it is a website or blog, it has to be optimized for all viewers. A good quality site always needs to have perfection and professionalism. If you lack these qualities your platform won’t be attractive to the readers.
So, it’s time to enrich the usability of your WordPress sites. I don’t think it’s very hard. Just spare 10 minutes to apply the above methods and create a professional WordPress mobile site.
Images: ”Gil C / Shutterstock.com“
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