This tip is one I have a lot of passion for. I use my mobile MDA to surf the Internet frequently. It's very frustrating when I get to a site that doesn't support mobile web browsers. There's really no excuse for it. There are so many free plug-ins for various blogging systems that your site could be mobile compatible in a matter of minutes.
The major blogging platforms such as MovableType, WordPress and Blogger either support mobile blogging or have plug-ins that make your blog work on a mobile browser. There are also plug-ins specific to Apple's iPhone. The iPhone plug-ins are fairly new but browsing on an iPhone is a little different than a PDA or SmartPhone. These are plugins for WordPress, I use Andy Moore's WordPress Mobile. It was the ability to create posts and upload files to my blog through the mobile browser that hooked me. Now I can post no matter where I am. Although Alex Kings plug-in works just fine it doesn't have creation capabilities at the time of this writing.
WordPress:
- Alex King's WordPress Mobile Edition plug-in
- Andy Moore's WordPress Mobile plug-in
- iWPhone WordPress plug-in (for the iPhone)
I'm not an expert with MovableType so I don't know what's available for that system but I'm sure there are plenty. It also appears that Blogger has built in mobile support, so any of the blogspot.com sites should render correctly.
If you decide to make your blog mobile compliant, and I hope you do, write a new post about it, tell everyone, and you may even create a unique sub-domain like m.digitalthom.com, which seems to be the way current way sites promote a mobile version.
When you get your blog mobile compatible please link back here in the comments and I'll be glad to take a look at it.
ProBlogger's day ten post: Declutter Your Sidebar
Great idea. I've been looking into this for the past week since I bought an iPhone. I haven't found Blogger pages to be too iPhone friendly, however. Not any more than any other web pages. I've spent the morning digging around Blogger's help pages and Google looking for a simple way to enable mobile support for my blog. Looks like I'm going to have to roll my own CSS code to do it - like I have time for ONE more project this week. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat Blogger blog were you looking at that rendered well for mobile devices? I'd like to study it - get some tips...
BTW, Chris Brogan recommended I contact you regarding Podcamp in SLC. I'd like to get in on that. Maybe help out. I'm a SLC blogger. Maybe you can tweet me (TheLaughingImp) or email me with details? Thanks.
Doug, hey, glad to hear from you. As far as Blogger is concerned, I just typed in thomallen.blogspot.com and it appeared to render correctly in my Windows Mobile 5 browser. You're welcome to try it out.
ReplyDeleteI noticed you use Blogger and your site appears to render great on my MDA, so it could be an iPhone thing.
As for PodcampSLC yes, I am working on the event right now. We have the domains and are trying to get things going and would love to have you participate. We are meeting about it in the next few weeks, and should have a few more SLC Bloggers helping out. Thanks for asking, and I'll send more info via email.
Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.
twitter.com/ThomAllen
[...] Day 10: Make Sure Your Blog Is Mobile Compliant [...]
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