WordPress.com makes mobile a standard
Now every time a new user starts a blog on WordPress.com, the default theme on their site will be mobile-friendly, demonstrating how important a consideration mobile devices have become for Web site owners.
The default configuration for new WordPress.com sites is a minimal, text-based theme that will load quickly and easily over a mobile phone’s Internet connection. By removing most of the formatting, WordPress ensures that it will load on virtually any of the dozens of mobile browsers on the market.
And of course, WordPress is giving special consideration to iPhone users, which makes sense given that they make up 50 percent of smartphone traffic. So each new WordPress blog will also come with the WPTouch theme that is specially designed for the iPhone.
In this new model, the blogs’ theme will automatically be ready for desktop and mobile Web traffic and will redirect iPhone users to the special theme. This way the experience remains very consistent for both mobile and desktop users outside of the special case for iPhone users.
While new WordPress.com bloggers may get the urge to jazz up their site’s theme by adding more pictures or formatting, they will be starting from a solid base. Though some might have the urge to create entirely separate mobile and desktop experiences, the experience can be fairly harrowing.
When designing a site for the Web, there are three primary desktop browsers that a developer has to consider. However the mobile industry still has dozens of proprietary browsers, so building special redirects to multiple versions could be a full time job.
Using plain text and simple formatting will help to eliminate the need to consider each mobile browser separately. Hopefully this will combat the poor mobile Web experiences that users face when surfing to sites that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Mobile browsers are quickly starting to integrate more advanced CSS styling and JavaScript capabilities, but the small screen may be changing our approach to Web design forever.
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October 21st, 2009
Hi!
Definitely a hot topic at the moment – everyone seems to be talking about wordpress mobile!
However, for self hosted blogs, there is a better solution available in the form of another mobile plugin. It’s called the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress and it works for every device, not catering for a specific sub-set of devices.
It makes your blogs look great – you can upload a mobile logo for your site that gets dynamically resized on the fly as well as being able to tailor the CSS on any element.
You get a load of options to really customize your mobile site too so you can provide the best possible user experience for your readers!