Mobile friendly?

[Martee]

Would you say that your site is mobile friendly? I'd say this site is because it looks awesome on my iPad but it also works well with TapaTalk! Very mobile friendly indeed!

 

[flame]

i cant check right now as my phone has decided to ignore its connection to my home network and tell me it cant connect via a different one

 

[Martee]

Want me to try it out for you?

 

[flame]

lol nah cause its not anywhere near finished - i am struggling with colour scheme, trying to get away from forum blue - i will test it properly when i have it sorted on the machine - right now its just someone elses theme

 

[otep2012]

You have to be mobile friendly in 2024! If anything, you need to be mobile first and then desktop second

 

[Tracy]

You have to be mobile friendly in 2024! If anything, you need to be mobile first and then desktop second

Depends on the niche in a lot of ways.

 

[Cory]

Thankfully, the software I use (Jcink) has a mobile-friendly version to view the site, otherwise, it would be complicated to create new skins to cater to mobile devices.

Mobile-friendliness is a must for most forums since mobile devices are ever-growing in popularity and usage. Many people probably have a smartphone, but no PC these days.

 

[Nomad]

My blogs are mobile friendly, I have used responsive themes. I use phpBB and in my experience phpBB looks very good on hand held devices. I also use MyBB, which I think is not very good for mobile devices.

 

[Tracy]

My blogs are mobile friendly, I have used responsive themes. I use phpBB and in my experience phpBB looks very good on hand held devices. I also use MyBB, which I think is not very good for mobile devices.

MyBB is a nice script... but last I checked, the mobile friendly aspect had to be theme/style done and not in the core script.
That is one of the things that hurts that script the most in todays environment.

 

[Ravenfreak]

Oh man this thread was originally made when lots of forum software weren’t responsive and you had to do some work to get forums to display properly on phones… I don’t miss those days, but heck I can’t believe MyBB is still not responsive by default. But all my sites are mobile friendly.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I try to keep my sites as mobile-friendly as possible. In fact, I feel that creating for mobile first is your best strategy.

I remember thinking they were nuts when they said start making it mobile friendly. That was back when smartphones were just introduced, and they sucked. Now most of your traffic is mobile.

I bet you if you made a from dedicated to desktop computers, over 80% of your traffic and views would be using a mobile device. LOL. You know it's true.

Be mobile friendly or the other forum will do it and get all the attention.

 

[Tracy]

I remember thinking they were nuts when they said start making it mobile friendly. That was back when smartphones were just introduced, and they sucked. Now most of your traffic is mobile.

I bet you if you made a from dedicated to desktop computers, over 80% of your traffic and views would be using a mobile device. LOL. You know it's true.

Depends on the niche really.

Most participants in my niche are on computers the biggest part of the time. About the only ones that spend a lot of time on tablets/phones are those that are using the ASIAir systems.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Depends on the niche really.

View attachment 4472

Most participants in my niche are on computers the biggest part of the time. About the only ones that spend a lot of time on tablets/phones are those that are using the ASIAir systems.

I'm also interested in the ages of your users.

A lot of older folks prefer desktops. I am one of them, lol. But in most cases, to market to a younger crowd, mobile-first will need to be a part of the strategy.

The general decline in forum use altogether might be due to a lack of mobile-first strategies.

What are your thoughts on that?

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Yes, all my sites are mobile friendly.

I would like to ditch Tapatalk, though I have a few stray Tapatalk users left.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Yes, all my sites are mobile friendly.

I would like to ditch Tapatalk, though I have a few stray Tapatalk users left.

I feel like your tapatalk users would convert over if they truly cared about your community.

 

[Cory]

The ONLY thing I like about Tapatalk is they have an app you can browse forums from.

 

[Tracy]

I'm also interested in the ages of your users.

So, for what Google can collect, over 50% of them are under 44.
My thoughts on mobile first? For some niches, it may be important. But generally folks that are hitting a niche site like mine are probably also sitting at a computer accessing their remote computer that is running their astrophotography equipment at the same time. It's not really affective unless you use an ASIAir to use a mobile interface to most of the capture software.

 

[Tracy]

The ONLY thing I like about Tapatalk is they have an app you can browse forums from.

What I hate about Tapatalk is that they apparently STILL make any upload of images using their software be stored on their systems. If you ever quit using it, lots of work has to be done to get those images and then update all posts that included them to reflect them being locally hosted.
One of the major sites in my niche uses them. And a lot of times images in their threads that are links to outside hosted images never even show up in the Tapatalk app.
That's the main reason I never even contemplated adding it to my site.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

View attachment 4473 View attachment 4474

So, for what Google can collect, over 50% of them are under 44.
My thoughts on mobile first? For some niches, it may be important. But generally folks that are hitting a niche site like mine are probably also sitting at a computer accessing their remote computer that is running their astrophotography equipment at the same time. It's not really affective unless you use an ASIAir to use a mobile interface to most of the capture software.

I could see that being the case—if a computer is a big component of Astro stuff, then that would make sense.

I mean, my blogging forum might also reflect the same results as it grows? It's way easier to blog on a computer than this little iPhone.

But I'll at least still keep mobile available to those who use it and make sure it's fully-featured and functional.