Your WordPress blog may have a superb looking theme for normal desktop and laptop users but have you thought about mobile users also? If not, then now is the time to think about those users who open your website from their mobile devices. Many times WordPress based blogs/websites don’t render properly on mobile devices like iPhone, iPad and other devices. The built-in browsers on iOS, Blackberry, Android and Windows phone can display full desktop sites but the site may still not look good in the browser. In this short tutorial, you’ll learn how to optimize your WordPress site for mobile users/devices.
WordPress Mobile Theme
An easy way to optimize your site is by using mobile friendly WordPress theme. This doesn’t mean that you have to change your WordPress theme to some another one but it means that you can use your existing theme, plus install a plugin for this purpose. Yes, you can transform your WordPress site into a native mobile experience easily by just using a plugin.
You may be wondering how does this work. Normal desktop users will be able to see your site as it is with normal theme and mobile users will be presented a site that is optimized specifically for mobile devices. This plugin will smartly identify and switch the theme, as and when needed.
WPtouch Mobile Theme
WPtouch is such a free mobile theme. WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress website into an application-like theme, when viewed from the most popular mobile web browsing devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, Android devices, Palm Pre/Pixi and BlackBerry OS6 mobile devices. It comes with complete ajax loading articles and effects.
The plugin comes with its own admin panel that allows you to customize the appearance for mobile visitors. The best part is that you don’t need to modify a single bit of code from your regular desktop theme. This plugin also adds a feature so that visitors can switch between WPtouch view (mobile view) and your site’s regular theme.
Download WPTouch for free from WordPress plugins library. You don’t need to spend a single penny for using this plugin.
There’s also a WPtouch Pro version that can be purchased for $49 (for single website), $99 (for 5 WordPress websites) and $199 (for unlimited websites). The paid version includes more features compared to the free version but if you’ve tried the free version and satisfied with it, then there’s no need to go for paid version.
WordPress Mobile Pack
This is yet another plugin to help mobilize your WordPress blog/site. It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, device adaptation, extra widgets, and a mobile admin panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts from mobile device.
The plugin also offer users the option to switch to desktop theme if required. It is smart and automatically identifies the device, if on desktop then the regular theme is displayed and if on mobile device then the mobile theme will be displayed to the visitor.
This plugin also features a mobile admin panel, that allows the blog admins to access the admin interface via a mobile device, with simplified access to the most common features such as editing a post or approving comments.
The mobile theme can rescale images, split articles and posts into multiple pages and removes non-supported media too. Mobile analytics feature allows the admin to track mobile visitors with PercentMobile.
Download WordPress Mobile Pack from plugins library.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Responsive themes are those themes which automatically adapt to the screen size of the user. Responsive themes are coded in such a way that they are fluid, adaptive and adjust according to the screen resolution and device on which the website is viewed. In short, this means that the website looks great in whichever device the visitor is using to visit your website.
If you want to test if a particular theme is responsive or not, then just resize your web browser and you’ll find that all the images and other elements will also resize automatically. On some themes, the sidebar will go to the bottom of the page. Nowadays we can say that using WordPress responsive themes is a new trend because just one theme is enough for all devices be it your mobile, tablet or PC.
The default Twenty Eleven theme by WordPress is responsive. Besides that you can find many free and premium themes on the same concept. Response, Responsive, Scherzo are such free responsive WordPress themes.
Try out these solutions and optimize your WordPress site for rendering perfectly in mobile devices, be it iPhone, iPad, Android phone or any other device. Now your visitors can enjoy reading articles at the comfort of their mobile devices.