Before I had my newborn, I would often take the train and bus into work, and I would use my
Droid X smartphone
to surf the web. Despite a speedy 3G connection, I appreciated websites that had a mobile version so I could get right to the content and bypass any irrelevant sidebars, videos, or other navigational tools. I felt the same should be true for this very site, so I began investigating options for mobilizing Chanatown. Just when I thought I had a winner, guess who stepped in with the easiest and best solution of them all? Find out after the jump.
A Google search of "mobilize website" often
produced a few leading tools: MoFuse,
Mobify and
Mippin. MoFuse did not have a free permanent version, so I focused on the other two. I briefly test drove each and found the following:
Mobify: I found this to be the most complicated, but this also means that Mobify is the most customizable. Upon signing in, users are greeted with a CSS editor with a live preview, and content can be managed as blocks. You can set up various templates, as well as preview different sized mobile screens. Once live, you have a customized web address that ended in mobify.me. If you're on a mobile device now, check out
chanatown.mobify.me, though be warned, I have not made any significant edits to the format/style for close to a month.
Mippin: Instead, I focused on using Mippin Mobilizer. Rather that needing to set up the styling of my mobile site, I was able to rely on the automatic mobilization feature found with Mippin. All I needed to do was submit the URL and/or RSS feed, and my mobile site was created. Contrary to Mobify, there was no new site redirct for the Mobile version, so I placed a link to the site on my main webpage.
See the mobile version using Mippin here. On one hand, Mippin does a great job of stripping down to the main content (the posts). On the other hand, a downside is that the tool only shows a limited number of posts, and archives are not searchable.
Instant Mobilizer: Being a customer of
GoDaddy.com, I
stumbled upon an article that revealed what could have been the best mobilizing option right under my nose. It turns out that GoDaddy has a partnership with Instant Mobilizer, and with a simple domain purchase and registration, my standard website was transformed into a mobile site within 48 hours. I will admit that I have had some challenges with the .mobi site, but Instant Mobilizer acknowledges that some content including Flash, Javascript, and forms will not be converted. Unlike Mippin however, I was able to include a search box on the site which allows for readers to look for and find specific posts.
Blogger Mobile Beta: Just when I was ready to publish this post, I receive a popup message on my Blogger dashboard. It turns out that Blogger is beta testing a mobilizing feature for its blogs. Quicker than you can say "instant mobilize," I had a very elegant solution to the mobile website conundrum. Similar to Mippin, I was limited a bit to the number of posts displayed on a page, and there was no search option. However, the page tabs were available, older posts were accessible, and mobile Adsense was enabled. If you are a Blogger user, I highly recommend using the beta feature.
For those on other platforms (Wordpress does have an automatically enabled mobile site feature), I recommend checking out 1) Mippin if you want a simple solution, 2) Mobify if you are interested in being able to customize and are comfortable with CSS editors, or 3) Instant Mobilizer for an all-in-one solution for your website.
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Before I had my newborn, I would often take the train and bus into work, and I would use my Droid X smartphone
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