The growth of mobile devices is a revolution to the way we access the internet these days. More internet users make use of their smartphones & tablets than PCs these days while surfing the web and thus the reason to build a mobile version of your website.
WordPress mobile site is essential for every blogger so you don’t deprive your mobile audience of your content. In fact Google recommends that website owners create mobile versions of their sites if you want to improve your SEO.
There are various ways you can build your WordPress mobile site and I intend to share these ways in this article with you. The option ranges from simple and low cost to expensive and complex methods, so you can choose the one that best suits your need.
Plugins
You can easily build a WordPress mobile site with third party plugins that are not related to your theme. While some of these plugins maybe free others are not, but with them you can create a WordPress mobile site that can give your audience a friendly interface to consume your contents.
Some plugins you can use to build your WordPress mobile site includes;
Wapple Architect Mobile plugin
All these plugins will simply display your site in a suitable manner for your mobile audience. I have personally used a couple of them, in fact I recently switched from MobilePress to Jetpack Mobile Theme. If you are looking at my site now via a mobile device you will probably be viewing the mobile theme.
To install the Mobile Theme, simply install Jetpack plugin and install & configure the mobile theme module to display a mobile site for your mobile audience. This option is simpler than the MobilePress I was using before, I like the interface, it’s neater and simpler.
Responsive Design
Another way to have a mobile site displayed for your mobile users is by the use of a responsive theme. Responsive themes will resize to fit every screen size your site is viewed with. With a responsive design you don’t have to worry about using any extra plugins to make your WordPress mobile site.
In one of my previously published articles titled “Why you should use a responsive design for your website”, I explained why you should consider a responsive theme while building your WordPress site.
Separate Mobile Site
Another way you can build your WordPress mobile site to build a separate mobile site entirely with a different domain or sub-domain. You may have seen sites that have m.thedomain.com. Such sites usually have a completely separate file structure that loads on the browser whenever it detects a mobile device.
While I can recommend the first two options above and not the later for anyone is because creating a separate mobile site may have some effects to your SEO as Google clearly recommends that webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices and using only CSS media queries to decide the rendering on each device.
Using a single URL for a page, rather than a separate mobile URL e.g. netmediablog.com vs. m.netmediablog.com will help the overall SEO of your site and pages by channeling all present and potential link juice into a single URL, instead of splitting it.
Now I hope you can build your WordPress mobile site easily choosing any of the options that best suits your needs. If you have any questions or contributions, be free to use the comment section below.
Top WordPress Plugins to Boost Your Site’s Traffic
5 Great WP Widgets for Your Blog
Preparing for an AdSense Application
When you should make your AdSense application
How to Improve Your Blog’s Crawling and Indexing Frequency
There is no doubt that I know my blog on mobile really sucks! I obviously really need to do something about it though as I;m using mobilepress!
Maybe you can try jetpack’s mobile theme
Hi Nwosu,
I preferred responsive design while choosing your theme rather than go for any other complex methods. It will take everything else and you can just focus on content development which is the prime purpose of any blogger.
Using plugin can be a temporary solution but often I discovered bugs and false positives. I’ve seen some blogs displaying mobile version while viewed in desktop browsers. This is ridiculous.
Creating totally different site is beyond recommendation for blogs!
In current days most of the people browse internet from their smartphones, and that’s why we need to give our utmost priority on building a great mobile friendly website…..The best thing is to go with a responsive theme, which adjusts itself with the device itself…..You are right Nwosu bro there are many way to build a mobile site on WP, and we should start using them right away….
Hi Nwosu,
Really you shared a very informative article with us. I like it and hope after applying these we may be able to increase the site traffic too.
Thanks
I totally agree with you on that, responsive design is the best way to building a WordPress mobile site, so while choosing a theme, ensure it is responsive so you won’t have to bother about making a mobile site.
Thanks for your awesome contribution.
Thanks Nwosu for this tutorials, i think i will give it a try, i do not have as at present any WP blog though.
Hello Nwosu, Having a responsive theme can help a lot to increase mobile views and in the same way a mobile specific url will help a lot in case of seo. In my opinion every site should be optimized for mobile and other small devices. Thanks for sharing this useful info with us Nwosu. Have a good day :)
Nice tutor, some people view setting up of site/blog as a full time job without thinking applying mobile platform is the life copy of the blogs future. live interview on how to Handle a mobile phone that accidentally falls into water yourself
Wow! Again another superb article. I know man your are giving me good stuff. When I checked my blog speed in google page insights these really sucked me. And I was worried because one of my visitor mailed me that he is not comfortable to use comment system in my blog.
So I need to use your tips to make more effectively. Thanks for giving us such good user guide to create mobile friendly site using some good wordpress plugins
A mobile site will definitely improve your site as your mobile users won’t be left out.