WPwatercooler

EP60 – Mobile Solutions for WordPress – WPwatercooler – Nov 4 2013

On this episode of WPwatercooler we will be discussing mobile solutions for WordPress, themes, apps and ways to integrate mobile with your project.

Mobile solutions

Start by asking yourself what the purpose is? Define what the goal is, who your audience is, how will they be experiencing your website?

If you’re serious about making your site responsive and mobile, start with Mobile First Design by A Book Apart  It’ll get you thinking about how people will be interacting with your data and what they’ll likely be doing when accessing your content.

Stop thinking about mobile versions of your site as an afterthought. Think about mobile first before you begin the design process.

Know that they way people use a mobile site is different than how they do on a desktop. Just adding a responsive theme to your site is not going to cut it.

Make sure your mobile site loads fast. No one will wait for your site to load when they’re on the go.

The term “Mobile” means more than iPhone and Android. It means devices that sometimes don’t have color screen, javascript or css, gaming consoles and so on.

25% of your audience will access your site ONLY from a mobile device and that percentage is rising.

Track your stats so you know who’s trying to access your site and how. Gather data through analytics.

One way to implement this is to make your desktop site blazingly fast. You can use picturefill and make sure the content is the main thin you’re seeing, not images and sidebars. On mobile you simply want to see content.

Simple speed tricks

Having a caching plugin in place like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache or something better if you have something like WP Engine.

Adding a CDN such as Max CDN so images load as fast as possible.

Aside from the web browser itself what are other ways for taking content from a WordPress interface and display it on a mobile environment?

Appmaker.com

redfoundry.com Both of those will take an rss feed or customized type of feed, and deliver them to an app that you can now use to deliver to an app store.

For more advanced devs

Titanium from Appcelerator

Phonegap – These both take some programming know how.

Some people will take a Json feed or an xml feed from your WordPress site and use something like phonegap which allows you to make a native app with HTML and Javascript  and get your content into it that way. The problem with that is you still have to build a static site and all you’re doing is taking a feed from WordPress.

AppPresser is a way to use all of the native WordPress plugins and themes and use that as a native app and you’re able to use things like the device camera, and the contacts etc… through WordPress using the skills you already have. You won’t have to get your hands dirty with native code. Available soon

Other Mentions

[LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep60-mobile-solutions-for-wordpress-wpwatercooler-nov-4-2013-5-5276fa4d58a6″ show_gravatar=”true”]

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2 responses to “EP60 – Mobile Solutions for WordPress – WPwatercooler – Nov 4 2013”

  1. Dennis Ball Avatar

    Great show!!! Lots of good info without all the silliness…..

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