Enabling my Blogs for Mobile Devices
The 3rd most direct hits on my blogs come from mobile devices, namely the iPhone. The default viewing experiences on a mobile device is kind of Ok. Still there is a lot to be desired. So I started looking into different options to “mobilify” the experience on DasCloud and The Pareto Principle. 
Both blogs run on Wordpress. Being on Wordpress, there’s multiple options if you want to improve the experience of your blog for mobile visitors. It all depends on how deep you want to go into configuration or fiddling with code.
If you are like me and want it to just work, WPTouch might be the right choice for you. Here’s all the work I had to do to enable what I believe is a great user experience for the mobile community. I selfhost my blogs. If you host your blog on wordpress.com, it is even easier.
Steps for selfhosters:
- Download the plugin from the author’s website
- UnZIP the files to a local directory
- Upload the files to your blog
- Bonus: Add “Windows CE” as additional mobile platform/user agent.
- Donate (still on my to-do list)
The bonus step enables users of Windows Mobile devices using the mobile version of IE to share the same experience as non Windows phone users. By default the following user agents are supported in the current version of the plugin:
android, aspen, blackberry9500, blackberry9530, cupcake, dream, incognito, iphone, ipod, opera mini, webmate, webos
The settings dialog of WPTouch offers a dead simple way to add other devices or agents.
Sound easy? Is easy, painless and works. A more detailed description is available on wordpress.org and the author’s website.
Tip:
In case you do not have a mobile device like an iPhone to test your configuration, Apple’s Safari may be of help on Windows and on the Mac OS. Once you enabled the developer menu via the advanced configuration dialog it allows you can “fake” different Apple mobile devices/browsers. There’s also a menu option to add a custom user agent. Safari can then pretend to be almost any browser on any platform.
Other themes/plugins supporting mobile devices on Wordpress that look cool but I have not played with:
