March 28, 2024

11 Excellent Solutions for Making Your Website Mobile Friendly

It seems that almost everybody has a cell phone these days, and with the growing adoption of smart phones, more and more people are browsing the internet on their mobile device. Even though some phones, like the iPhone, have browsers that make viewing regular webpages suitable, a mobile version of your website can mean several benefits, like faster load times, and ensuring your content can be viewed on a wider range of phones.

Creating a mobile version of WDL has been on my to-do list for a while now, but yet there is still no mobile version of this site. Sensing that I’ve been putting it off for far too long, I’ve started to do research on the best mobile solution for Web Design Ledger. I’ve found that there are a number of solutions out there that make it easy to go mobile with your website, but here are eleven of the best.

WPtouch

mobile version tools

WPtouch is a mobile theme for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, it loads lightning fast and shows your content beautifully, without interfering with your regular site theme. WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into a web-application experience when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, or BlackBerry Storm touch mobile device.

MoFuse

mobile version tools

MoFuse is currently being used by over 23,000 blogs for their mobile versions. Some notable “big-name” sites are Mashable and Read Write Web. MoFuse gives you tools to promote your content, build and measure your audience, and even make money.

Mippin Mobilizer

mobile version tools

Mippin Mobilizer helps you get your site mobilized in just a few quick steps, and give you full control over the branding and logo. It also give you the ability to monetize your mobile site through advertising.

Mobify

mobile version tools

Mobify gives you full control over the layout of your mobile site with CSS, and it supports over 5000 mobile devices. It also gives you tools to manage mobile advertising and analytics.

Wirenode

mobile version tools

Wirenode currently hosts nearly 40,000 mobile webpages, and include in those are some popular brands like Reebok and Ford. With Wirenode it takes about 5 minutes to get a mobile version of your site up and running, and it gives you features like mobile widgets, RSS mobilization, and mobile polls and forms.

WPtap

mobile version tools

WPtap delivers mobile themes/plugins that can instantly convert your WordPress site into web-application experience when viewed from iPhone, iPod Touch, touch-based Blackberry, and Android smartphones. WPtap offers comprehensive mobile theme solutions for your WordPress website. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos & more. WPtap also offers many customization features through a user-friendly WordPress admin panel.

mobiSiteGalore

mobile version tools

mobiSiteGalore is a mobile website builder that allows you to easily build, publish & share a full-fledged mobile website that is guaranteed to work fine on any mobile phone. Design templates allow you to completely customize the colors, fonts and layout on the page to create a unique looking mobile version of your website.

WordPress Mobile Pack

mobile version tools

The WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog. It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.

Zinadoo

mobile version tools

Zinadoo is a web solution that allows you to create a mobile version of your website in just a few minutes. You can also optimize your site for Google Mobile with keywords and tags, and make use of their special mobile widgets.

Winksite

mobile version tools

Winksite was the first standards-compliant mobile Website builder that included RSS-driven content deployment and mobile-tuned community features such as forum, chat, and polls. It also allows you to monetize your mobile site with advertising from leading advertising networks. Your revenue share is 100%. Winksite does not take a share of the revenue that your mobile site generates.

MobilePress

mobile version tools

MobilePress is a free WordPress plugin which turns your WordPress blog into a mobile friendly blog when viewed on a cell phone. MobilePress also allows you to create custom mobile themes for different handheld devices and mobile browsers such as the iPhone, Opera Mini and Windows Mobile.

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Henry Jones is a web developer, designer, and entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience. He is the founder of WDL and ThemeTrust.

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35 Comments

  1. twapt Reply

    Thanks for sharing, yes i like WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog.

    twapt.net is tools for mobile form builder.

  2. Chris Mower Reply

    I was using WPTouch a while back (maybe a year ago) on my cooking site, but it ended up conflicting with another pluging. I’m sure that’s resolved by now, so I’ll have to look into using a mobile-friendly plugin again.

  3. Nigel Reply

    I’m surprised wapple isn’t in the list. Very impressed by their plugin and service plus they appear to work with some major brands.

  4. AJ Reply

    I have a flash website and would like to advice on which service is best for making site mobile ready without redesigning the site. Thanks

  5. EddieZ Reply

    I also wanted to ask the same question AJ.
    Is there a solution if you have flash type setup?
    Or should one just stay away from flash for that reason? Thanks for your time anybody

  6. Helena Reply

    I think many companies just don’t notice yet how important mobile website is for their business. However, I’m sure that thanks to great services mentioned also the awareness is spread.

    I’d also add Moogo (http://www.moogo.com) to the list. Although it doesn’t allow you to create a mobile site out of already existing website, it does allow you to create a website from scratch that also looks good with a mobile phone. The best feature is that you can also choose which parts of your website are visible with a mobile phone and which aren’t. E.g. I think it’s wise to disable heavy photos and videos on mobile site.

    If you want to know more about the topic, check out a video blog entry: http://www.moogo.com/blog/2010/06/24/111

  7. Frederick Allen Reply

    I don’t see Unity Mobile on the list. I’ve been using Unity Mobile for all my mobile sites. It’s like a one stop mobile spot, they offer SMS tools, QR Code image, web site importer… everything. You can even turn your mobile site into an app that works on all phones.
    http://unitymobile.com

  8. Jeremy Stevens Reply

    Smartviso should be on this list… probably first. I’ve tried a few that you mentioned and this seems to be the better of the bunch. Not perfect, but it makes way better sites and gives more flexibility.

  9. Tony Marshall Reply

    Hi Henry,

    Nice article. I’d be interested to know which systems people think are “best”. Keeping the same url and loading different templates dependent upon the user agent OR redirecting to a different domain.

    I guess the former has the advantage of it’s all on one domain – but I’m not sure how much of a real advantage that is. Some providers make a big thing that it’s better for SEO, but I’m not convinced by that. You want your mobile pages to rank in google’s mobile search imdex not the main index and I’m not sure how they achieve that when javascript is involved.

    Ultimately I suspect you pays your money and makes your choice – there are pros and cons of both methods and an in-depth critique is probably a topic for separate article.

    I think most readers here will be convinced we need to educate and prod website owners to get mobile. We built a small tool to show website owners how their website is currently seen on a mobile phone. It’s free for anyone to use I hope it might be of use to you or your readers – http://www.sayuconnect.com/mobile_check.php

    Tony

  10. Mark Reply

    Great Post and found it as I am looking at making one or two websites ‘Mobile Compliant’- Will need to check out a few of your links and see which one is relevant to what I need.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Mark

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