One of the more frustrating aspects of WordPress blog design is in making sure that your blog or WordPress installation appears correctly across numerous platforms. In the past much of this focused on optimising your blog for various desktop PC or Mac browsers, but now it’s all about ensuring that your blog or site is mobile friendly. IPads, smart phones, Android tablets – and even future smart watches – constitute a mobile browsing experience which is now dominating the industry. In short, if your site or blog does not appear correctly on all platforms then you will loose much of your potential user-base.
In other words: You need your WordPress blog to display properly on every mobile device!
Thankfully, WordPress has a comprehensive plugin system which allows you to easily install plugins designed to make your blog appear and behave in the way that you want it to, across all mobile and desktop devices. That being said, the sheer number of available plugins can be both confusing and intimidating. Which ones are most effective? Which ones should you use?
With this in mind, let’s look at the top 5 mobile plugins which will help you get your blog out to the mobile masses with a minimum of tweaking.
Top 5 WordPress Plugins
- WordPress Mobile Pack: This plugin is a completely comprehensive suite which will provide you with detailed and precise control over how your WordPress blog appears on mobile devices. It supplies the blog admin with a single theme designed to simply display all of the relevant information you want to get across to your blog’s visitors. There are a dizzying number of options, but don’t let that put you off, just take your time with it. This is an extremely powerful and effective plugin which will quickly optimise your blog for mobile devices.
- WordPress Mobile Edition: This plugin detects automatically whether a visitor to your site is using a mobile device or not. By adding in all of the available mobile browsers in the plugin’s settings page, your site will now switch between desktop and mobile themes based on which is the most effective for the user, and then select a specific way to display your site by detecting the individual browser being used. A mobile theme designed only for that browser will then be used on that occasion.
- WP viewMobile: This plugin guarantees your blog or site to be ready for visitors on mobile devices with just a a few simple clicks. Going for a ‘back to basics’ approach, viewMobile reduces the resolution and clutter of your blog or website so that it is compatible, not just with cutting edge smart phone technology, but also with legacy mobile devices. By using adaptive processes, this plugin will resize your site’s images based on the capabilities of the mobile device being used, ensuring that your site is viewable even on the smallest of screens.
- WP Mobile Detector: The Mobile Detector app is a really simple way to push your blog into the mobile domain. It will detect immediately whether any visitor is using a mobile device or not, and then switch to the desired browsing scheme. It is very easy to use and install, what’s more, it also comes with a variety of pre-installed mobile themes which you can choose from including, Anakin, Jester, Casper, Colbalt, Mojo, Viper, and Bluesteel. The plugin uses jQuery and will automatically format your entire blog for you.
- Mobile Press: This is probably the simplest mobile plugin available, but don’t let that fool you, it is very effective. There aren’t many options, but that is precisely why it is perfect for those looking for an automatic, quick and easy way to display their WordPress installation on mobile devices. There are two themes offered through Mobile Press, and depending on which one you choose, that will be the theme loaded whenever a mobile visitor uses your site or blog. Simple and brilliantly effective!
Stay Up-to-Date!
Remember that blog design is a constantly evolving field and as such, you should always try to stay ahead of the pack. These five mobile WordPress plugins are a great place to start, but make sure that every couple of months you check to see if there are new plugins which would compliment these to make your blog even more mobile friendly.
About the author
Alice McLean is a writer at <a href=”http://www.bestessays.com“>bestessays.com</a> with background in history, sociology and internet marketing. Now she is writing her first book on internet marketing.
