Desktop browsers are not the only place to display your site
The desktop used to be the only thing that mattered and up until a few says ago, that seemed to still be true. But with the recent proliferation of tablets and smart phones, the whole environment has altered and mobile must be part of your considerations for the future. If you do not look at mobile, you will be missing out on a growing segment of the market. And that segment is growing quickly and will continue to do so, especially with the improving smart phones which we are seeing this year. And they are only going to be getting better. The question is what have you done with your Wordpress site to prepare for the the coming mobile wave?
On some of my sites over the past few years, I have been using Wapple Architect which I have been very happy with under various sites. It has served me well and displays sites very nicely on a smart phone. It is very easy to set up and use, so there was no excuse to not have it on my sites to take advantage of. While I have used this Wordpress plugin, I am always open to considering other options for getting a mobile displayed web site. But, here at TechieDiy, we have found another one we are using for this site and it meets out needs very nicely.
In looking around, we here at TechieDIY have moved to WP Mobile Director as a different option for handling our mobile traffic through the same web site as our normal web site. As with other plugins, it detects the device, whether a computer or a mobile device. If it is a mobile device, it determines whether it is a smart phone or just a normal cell phone and handles it accordingly. There is both a free version and a paid version of the product available with the paid version providing advertising support. You should take a look at WP Mobile Director to see whether it will fit the needs that you have for handle mobile devices on your site.
These two are not the only ones available which can provide you with a mobile display from your Wordpress site. One of the popular ones is Wordpress Mobile Pack which many are using for their sites. This one provides a complete package to help you with your site and the ability to display varying displays and as with all of these, the ability to switch between the mobile or desktop version on a mobile device.
Another Wordpress plugin is MobilePress which has similar features as other leading plugins to render your browser based site on a mobile device. There are the expected capabilities for advertising as well. There are many other Wordpress plugins available for your Wordpress site where you want to display to a standard browser and to a mobile device. If you only want to have a mobile site, there are a number of mobile themes available for your to take advantage of.
For the world of mobile, it is important that you look at this now. With the changes to how mobile devices are working, in particularly the recent and coming smart phones, it is important to realize this shift in technology. With Siri from Apple, it has forever changed search options from purely text based to now voiced based. Now, with S Voice from Samsung and coming on their Galaxy S3, we are seeing an expansion of the methods for searching the web and you must consider the growing traffic. Even Yahoo's Axis, which has just been announced, is changing the mobile platform to use thumbnails as a way to navigate instead of entering text.
With GPS on smart phone, the ability to return search results based on where a smart phone user is located will further alter the mobile search world. There are so many others related to search which will be changing how mobile browsing is going to evolve and it is important that you make sure you are a part of it.
Take the time now to look at your mobile strategy for your Wordpress site. As more people get smart phones, where will your business be?
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