Forum owners who don't have mobile-friendly layouts

Thats really no excuse and I'd tell them that >_> Tell them to download Writer App or Google Doc.

 

When I redid the skins for my board I tried to make them as mobile-friendly as possible i.e. using em for font sizes instead of px, coding a skin with no banner etc. I post from mobile and have lots of users who do, too. It just makes sense.

We're on jcink and their default mobile styles are pretty decent, fortunately, but I wanted users to have other options, too.

 

I know the big majority of people are now using mobile devices (either phones or tablets etc) for getting online and we have set our sites to be mobile friendly. Some members get it, some don't though; unless you can recreate the format used from a PC we use on the site, please don't bother. Its tough I know, but I hate seeing crappy half done posts and I'm not talking about IC content, we do use a special format for posting.

 

Should check the date on that post- since then my site's forum has been updated and I installed that mobile friendly skin I found.

 

80% of my posting is done via mobile, so this is the stump I'm going to die on.

The vast majority of site owners and skin designers are hobbyists. They might not be up to date on modern web standards or design best practices, and even if they are, they might have no idea how to code a mobile responsive site. (Spoiler: use Bootstrap 4 or other CSS framework.)

But mostly, nearly all of the free forum siftwares' default skins (and I imagine most skins fork off of this original code) are horrifyingly dated and difficult to make mobile responsive without gutting them entirely. Tables. Tables everywhere.

RPGfix is a great example of mobile accessibility, but it also runs on Xenforo! Premium software that has a modern and mobile responsive base theme, which means almost all its custom themes are also going to be mobile responsive (unless the designer really hecks something up).

MyBB 2.0 (One Day (TM)) will be mobile responsive, iirc. And when that happens, I expect there'll be an uptick in mobile responsive designs.

 

Google penalizes websites for not being mobile friendly, so if you are trying to rank on Google searches for certain keywords keep that in mind

 

Yeah, making sure my forum is mobile compatible is a big issue for me, especially since I know a bunch of my members came from discord (since I made a forum just because everyone was annoyed at the 2000 characters cap with discord messages, lol).

 

I'd love to make my site mobile friendly but my problem is that I have no idea how to do it. While I have found a mobile themes that will do the job nicely, I have zero knowledge as to how to install it and make it work, as it is a little more complicated than simply installing the regular SMF themes

 

I mean, if you're not sure how to do it, there's two main solutions: research and learn, or just go the easy route and buy one that is. What I did was get styles that are good to go already and then I just tweaked them to fit my site. My site become responsive in 2013 and I haven't looked back since. These days even Google's robots browse from a mobile perspective.

Also to folks worried about post quality decreasing, I would give myself as an example where I read posts whereever I am, using my phone, and reply where an urgent reply is needed, but for longer posts I wait until I get home and use my PC. There's others who would do the same.

 

I think mobile-friendly layouts are definitely a plus for the many users who will prefer this platform, but I would not say that it is essential. At least in my experience, I will pull out the laptop specifically for creative writing purposes as typing on a keyboard is so much easier for me.

 

A mobile-friendly layout is one of my absolute top priorities whenever I have designed a site. A site that is difficult or unusable on mobile (or tablets, such as iOS) is just a deal-breaker, flat out. I’m an adult; I don’t have the time to be sitting in front of my computer all day checking out a forum that’s too archaic to work on any other platform.

Besides, making your site mobile-friendly shows that you are a thoughtful site-runner who takes various different potential situations that users may be engaging with your site into consideration. Having a mobile-unfriendly site gives me the impression that a site’s management is going to be similarly lopsided and sloppy.

 

Since my last post I have been able to have my site mobile friendly. And immediately I noticed the difference. Members post quality went down. From an average of several paragraphs for those switching to mobile, they tend to just pop in and write a few miserable lines. While it might be handy for a quick read; it isn't something that I encourage.

 

My site has a lot of long-form writers, so it wouldn't do them any justice to post from mobile. They'll browse on mobile to read threads they are tagged in, but otherwise no one posts from it. Instead, I've focused on making slight adjustments so they can load my site on mobile, but it's very slight and almost not noticeable since most, again, prefer to write on the site when on a desktop or Mac.

 

I wonder if a modification could be added to the software to flag short messages for moderation? Or to highlight in red or something, prompting the authors to write a longer / better quality post? Perhaps even a gamification of installing a post length bar or award or some other motivator to give aide for writing higher quality posts. Maybe something as simple as a rule upon signing up and joining, with an example of a good quality post, consisting of a couple of well thought out paragraphs, action beats that other players can latch on to, as well as a poorly written example detailing why it's a crappy post and to be avoided? I'm just throwing suggestions out right now.

I currently use SMF, and I believe that I'm using mobile responsive themes, however, I really don't use my phone to post with, but I do browse with it, but then again, I'm old-school, and prefer to use a PC with a full sized keyboard and large screen so I have quick access to my notes.

I do realize that it's been a couple of years since this was last posted to, so I will ask, have any remedies been found yet?