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WordPress Plugins from A to Z Episode 47 Mobile Theme Plugins

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Crazy DayzThis week we are covering mobile device plugins that will automatically create mobile themes for your site.

John’s Rant: What to rant about?
Hmm a rant a rant my kingdom for a rant… Ok I really do have something you will just have to listen to hear about it.. It is my opinions about copyright law and the ludriciousness of it all. here is a great place to start on your road to craziness http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide

 

Shout Outs: None this week

 

Something new list of interesting sites that run on WordPress:

Cicil Service UK http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/

 

World of WordPress News:

WordPress 3.3 is now in beta stage you can get it here to play with it.. I don’t think I like the flyout menues they always drive me nuts hope it is made an option not the only choice.. I look forward to drag and drop uploading though.. http://wordpress.org/news/2011/10/wordpress-3-3-beta-1/

that way outList of Plugins:

WPTouch:

What they say:

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.

What I Say:
I have been using this plugin for sometime now and enjoyed quite well, lately I have been running into issues with it though. I went to show it off on a couple of website I had it installed on because someone was asking about a mobile theme for WordPress.

Of course this was when he plugin decide that it would no longer work correctly just to show how chaos is really in charge of the world and not me like I generally believe. This plugin gives you a nice interface for configuration and is pretty straight forward to use.

You can choose the home page landing page, decide on icons, choose the menu settings and more. If your trying to monetize you can even add your google adsense code to it. Like I said I had found this to be a great plugin for mobile until recently, not sure why recent issues have not had a chance to look into them.

One drawback is theme customization is limited unless you buy the pro version.
Rating 2 Dragons

Going UpWapple Architect Mobile Plugin:

What they say:
Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress is a plugin that allows you to mobilize your blog in minutes.
Every single mobile device is detected and all aspects of your blog are tailored to the visiting handset. Sites aren't dumbed down to the lowest common denominator but instead use the features and functionality that advanced phones offer.

What I say:
This one was new to me so here is what I found.. Received some errors on install some sort of parse error. It has some pretty extensive configurations to accomplish a bit more time than I had to devote to this one. It did look like you can choose many settings and even place adverting code into it. One of the basic setting required an API key from Wapple though they don’t make it easy to find.. All in all this one required a fair bit of time to get up and running.
Rating 2 Knight

WP Mobile Detector:

What they say:
The WP Mobile Detector WordPress plugin automatically detects if the visitor is using a standard mobile phone or a smart phone and loads a compatible WordPress mobile theme for each.
It is one of the first to differentiate between a standard mobile phone and a smart phone. With advanced mobile statistics, image resizing, automatically formatted content, and detection of 5,000+ mobile phones, the WP Mobile Detector gives your mobile visitors the experience they desire.

What I say:
It is very easy to use install and its ready to go. Comes with several themes to choose from and easy to change them. One thing I find misleading (now don’t get me wrong I have no problem giving credit where it is due) they offer you an opportunity to disable the footer link but if you do it is still there.

Navigation in the mobile them is difficult and it is hard to get back where you started from or simply back to home page. It does off some nice stats but that is about the best benefit I have found with it. They do offer a premium version that looks like you can improve the menus.
Rating 1 Dragons

Mobile Smart:

What They Say:
Mobile Smart, using detection from the MobileESP project (http://www.mobileesp.com) allows the following:

  • Switch your theme to a mobile-ready theme if a mobile device is detected
  • Manual Switcher – to allow your user to manually switch between desktop and mobile versions. Available in 3 versions: widget, option to automatically insert into footer, or template tag.
  • Template functions to help determine which tier of mobile device (touch/smartphone/other) is viewing your site, to allow conditional content inclusion.
  • Adds device and tier specific CSS selectors to the body_class, to allow conditional CSS (e.g. so in the same way you have “.single” that you can target “.iphone” or “.mobile-tier-touch”.)

What I say:
This one is more work than I was able to give it. Since you had to install the WordPress Mobile Pack just to get a theme I did not go too far with this one..
Rating 3 Knights
Some Terms here for plugins: Nothing special this week..

Mobile Theme: this is the easier to navigate theme than your standard web theme for your site.
In closing here is what is coming in future podcasts:

An interview with the creator of the File Monitor plugin coming soon, just as soon as I can schedule it up.

Video Plugins

Membership Plugins

WEBphysiology Portfolio

 

Wolf at the doorHow to Contact Me:

John can be contacted at:

on my website @ http://www.johnoverall.com/ or you can follow me on Twitter @Ahkonsu or even like me on Facebook at  http://www.facebook.com/JohnOverallcom

 

Some of the music provided tonight from Mevio's Music Alley. Check it out at ‘music.mevio.com http://music.mevio.com

 

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2 replies
  1. Yoram Zara
    Yoram Zara says:

    I feel that it is better to use several tools to get the mobile experience you want:

    1. I use mobile smart to allow me to choose a theme for the mobile. It also ads a nice link at the bottom of the page so you can switch between mobile and regular view on the pc.

    2. I searched for themes with the word “mobile” in the wordpress panel admin. Currently there are 10. I installed them all.

    3. I switched between the themes through the mobile smart plugin and saw which one I like. I chose “Yoko” because it supports Right to left nicely (Hebrew)

    4. I installed All In One Favicon to set the mobile favicons (allows for a nice bookmark on iphone when you put the bookmark on the front screen)

    I feel that this is better than choosing a one holistic solution for mobile like WP touch. It allows for more flexibility in choosing the mobile theme. It is just like choosing your regular theme. I know that there are other mobile themes outside the wordperss repository, so you have many options to get the mobile look you want. For me the Yoko theme was good enough.

    Keep up the good work on the podcast. You surely taught me a lot.

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