CMS Development Tracking

Twitterized answer? Abso-freakin-lutely! Take a look at the following graph. It shows the pageviews and unique visitors on this blog from mobile browsers since we started tracking last year. Notice the numbers and the trends? How many of your visitors, do you think, come back to your blog after your page takes five minutes to load on their iPhone, and needs the twenty flick, carpal thumb scroll to read browse through the huge header? If you care about your reader and want to keep up with this growing populations’ reading habits, a mobile plugin on your blog is a necessity. Now what you use is up to you.

Mobile Statistics

We use MoFuse on this blog and I must add it is somewhat successful. The mobile pages are decent, the pages load relatively fast and the statistics are nice. But the admin pages are painfully slow and MoFuse injects their own ads to the browsed pages. To offload the hassle of course, is priceless. The following list is a short rundown of the most popular ways to build a mobile version of your blog on WordPress. Please add yours in the comments if I have forgotten one or if you have an opinion about any of these.

• WordPress Mobile Edition is a fantastic plugin from Alex King’s Crowd Favorite that builds a mobile version of your blog and even adds a commenting interface. Their mobile demo on the Carrington theme is quite attractive indeed. Smaller screens do not display this as well as the iPhone does.
• WordPressMobile.mobi (I just noticed the WordPress in the domain name) A WordPress mobile plugin by Andy Moore that provides a mobile version of your WordPress blog. The site does not provide any screenshots or details, just a forum. Looks like a very popular plugin with lots of installs.
• WordPress Mobile Pack by James Pearce is a well liked set of plugins that creates a mobile environment for your WordPress blog including the admin panel. Screenshots are included on the extend pages.
• Mobilize is another plugin that renders your WordPress blog via Mippin and even allows the user to insert their own ads. The plugin touts to be configuration free. Clean and tidy.
• WordPress PDA and iPhone is a simple, straightforward plugin that renders a simple version of your blog on a PDA. Output screenshots on the plugin page.
• MobilePress is a WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes. The plugin also allows specific themes for specific devices / mobile browsers, such as iPhone, Opera Mini, Windows CE Mobile and other generic handset browsers. Nice site, good screenshots, simple install.
• WPTouch is a mobile plugin and theme combination for WordPress that adds a sleek WordPress theme for iPhone visitors.

There are various other plugins on the WordPress Extend that extends the mobile functionality to your WordPress blog. Choose one that fits your needs and wants and just let it run. You have nothing to lose but a lot of new readers to gain.

What mobile plugins have I missed? Do you read blogs over your mobile phone?

Post from: Weblog Tools Collection

Should you use a Mobile WordPress Plugin?

Related CMS news: