Mobile website

[brightmike]

Our website is not mobile friendly.

What would my options be for creating a mobile version?

I have some technical ability having created the original website myself but don't have the knowledge to covert it to mobile.

[kevsboredagain]

Your first choice is to decide if you want the site to be responsive or to serve a separate mobile site. A responsive site would adapt to all display sizes but the content may still not be truly optimised for a device with a slow data connection. A mobile only site can be optimised for such a device but then you have a problem of which is best to display on middle sized devices such as tablets.

Generally speaking it's extremely difficult to "convert" a site into something mobile friendly and you would have to start with new framework and add your content back again.

Of the two choices I prefer responsive simply because you cannot simply split devices into desktop and mobile anymore.

[Vince]

Of the two choices I prefer responsive simply because you cannot simply split devices into desktop and mobile anymore.

Arguably, you can but it's old hat, very few people do it any more and it's a pig to maintain if you want to add content to the site regularly, which you should be doing to keep the content fresh and google interested in you.

As Kev said, go Responsive. I personally favour using the Bootstrap framework ( http://getbootstrap.com/ ) because once you've learned it, it's a breeze to implement. If you're running a content management system, then it's likely to be very easy to find a Bootstrapped theme to work with it.

[brightmike]

Thanks guys. It does sound like responsive is the way to go. Although I maintain my own website I don't want to have to invest too much time learning something. I will look at bootstrap, but it's looks complicated on first glance, are there any other options.

I appreciate I am asking for free advice on a service for which you normally charge

[Vince]

Unfortunately you can't gain without spending a little time learning. The only other option is to hire somebody to do the work for you, but it's difficult then to sort out the shysters from the good ones.

That's why I prefer to do the work myself

[kevsboredagain]

Without knowing what you are currently using it's difficult to suggest the easiest way forward.

Looking at your site source code I would imagine you either learned HTML a long time ago or are using a very old page authoring tool. Assuming it's a tool, then perhaps there are newer versions available which have responsive frameworks already available as a starting template.

Another option would be to use a cms system such as Joomla or Wordpress. Both are fairly easy to learn and responsive templates are easy to find, giving you a framework to start from.

Whatever route you chose, you have to invest either time, money or both.

[Nemo]

I use wordpress with a responsive template, so it's mobile friendly to a point. The main issue is that people use their phones for so much, but my contact form is in an iframe and you can't view all of it on a phone.

I've had a few people text or facebook message me saying they can't use the form, so I've put an email address on there for them instead. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

It took me quite some time, plus help from an expert to get my head round wordpress, but others find it much easier. Now it's up and running, it does the job well and I'm in full control. I find a little bit of html knowledge has helped along the way too.

[Essar]

I use wordpress with a responsive template, so it's mobile friendly to a point. The main issue is that people use their phones for so much, but my contact form is in an iframe and you can't view all of it on a phone.

I've had a few people text or facebook message me saying they can't use the form, so I've put an email address on there for them instead. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

It took me quite some time, plus help from an expert to get my head round wordpress, but others find it much easier. Now it's up and running, it does the job well and I'm in full control. I find a little bit of html knowledge has helped along the way too.

Have a look at Wufoo forms - they have a WordPress widget for your website and they are mobile friendly too.

No I don't have any affiliation to Wufoo.

[kevsboredagain]

I use wordpress with a responsive template, so it's mobile friendly to a point. The main issue is that people use their phones for so much, but my contact form is in an iframe and you can't view all of it on a phone.

Have a look at Wufoo forms - they have a WordPress widget for your website and they are mobile friendly too.

No I don't have any affiliation to Wufoo.

The problem I believe is PIMs? There are plenty of free Wordpress forms which are responsive.

[Hells Bells]

However using that free form doesn't save all the details of the enquiry in PIMS.

[kevsboredagain]

However using that free form doesn't save all the details of the enquiry in PIMS.

Was fully aware of that but the way nemo worded it suggested a problem with Wordpress.

[russellt]

My accomm website has been a continuous work in progress. Recently, as I was tweaking the design & content for desktop viewing, i considered the question of mobile devices. For sure, my website layout looked a real mess on any mobile device. So I went about adding 'media queries' to the css stylesheets to create a slimmed down version of the main website.

Using media queries and CSS3, you can make an incredible amount of change, to format content for different sized viewports, all based upon the existing website content. And it is not too difficult to learn.

My new mobile device layouts are by no means perfect, and I will continue to tweak them, but they are now reasonably formatted for desktop, small mobile devices(samsung s4, iphone 5) and tablets(ipad, ipad-mini) in both portrait and landscape orientation.

(FYI, the Chrome browser's device mode toggle button is invaluable for emulating the effect of media queries on the fly.)

There are still so many websites out there(even those of very large organisations) that have not been optimised for mobile devices that, I believe, at least making mine legible(if not perfect) and hopefully useable, is a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately i don't have any user statistics to prove that my efforts are worthwhile, but it feels like it is the right thing to do for an increasingly mobile-centric population.

Has anyone else dived into media queries? What's not to like? Your thoughts?

[Nemo]

I use wordpress with a responsive template, so it's mobile friendly to a point. The main issue is that people use their phones for so much, but my contact form is in an iframe and you can't view all of it on a phone.

Have a look at Wufoo forms - they have a WordPress widget for your website and they are mobile friendly too.

The problem I believe is PIMs? There are plenty of free Wordpress forms which are responsive.

Yes, to be clear the PIMS form is in an iframe and that's what causes the issue on a phone. However, for the number of enquiries I have, I wouldn't be prepared to sacrifice the automatic data filling for PIMS, in favour of a responsive form, where I then have to manually enter the data into PIMS.

Only some guests try using a small phone screen to do this; the majority are clearly using tablets or their computers to contact me, as most enquiries come through without issue. It's all about which compromise you're prepared to make.

[brightmike]

Thanks russellt for the media queries suggestion, will check that out.

[kevsboredagain]

Has anyone else dived into media queries? What's not to like? Your thoughts?

Media queries is how responsive sites are made for sure but they still require a reasonable knowledge of CSS. As a starting point you would also need a site which lends itself to style changes in the first place.

One of the most difficult parts for a mobile site is defining a new menu which can work on mobiles. Russellt, you've managed to avoid this as your menu is fairly small so you simply scaled it and allowed it to wrap around. Your site was also designed using CSS in the first place, so defining new rules to control the section widths or scaling was possible.

The OP has a site which contains hardly any CSS and is based entirely on HTML table constructs. This would be fairly difficult to change just with some media queries and CSS. Tables and responsive layouts don't mix well simply because they cannot flow like CSS div elements. For example, if you have a sidebar on your page, this would flow underneath on a small screen with a responsive layout. If tables are used, then it cannot do this.