WordPress is now powering close to 20% of all websites in the World and more than 50% of Worlds websites with content management system. Well, that’s a lot. If you are web developer chances are that websites you build are powered by WordPress content management system. But there is another well notable trend out there. Number of smart mobile devices is growing rapidly as well. Majority of these devices can access content on the web, through mobile web browsers and native applications.
How does it effect sites which are built on WordPress? There are responsive layouts designed for Themes and default WordPress theme has responsive design. But what else can be done on WordPress content management system to get best experience for you site visitors and make them happy while accessing your site via mobile smart device. We have created a list of most popular plugins (thanks to very active WordPress developer community) which will help you develop mobile only experiences and leave your desktop site designed for desktop only. Enjoy!
WP Mobile Detector
WordPress mobile detector plugin after installation detects what device your visitors are using to access web site and based on the type of device will serve your selected theme. This means you can have separate themes for different devices. This plugin can detect up to 5000 different models of mobile devices and this gives you lots of power to make your site look beautiful on the major ones.
WP Mobile Pack
This plugin is a tool kit for taking control of how your WordPress site looks while accessed from mobile device. It has the following functions: Rescaling of images, intelligent splitting of articles and posts into multiple pages, mobile admin panel, mobile add widget, and many others. It includes default themes and is fully integrated into WordPress admin panel (will even make it mobile friendly for you). And if you would like to dig in deeper and get your hands dirty with code plugin can be even further customized.
Wapple Architect Mobile
This plugin detects type of device accessing your site in similar manner as other plugins. Whats different however is that to detect devices its using Wapples web services. There is no redirection and all blog URL’s do remain the same. It as well does image resizing, integrates mobile advertising (Admob and Adsense), uploads mobile specific header and footer images.
Any Mobile Theme Switcher
Simple yet useful and powerful WordPress mobile plugin to show different versions of WordPress themes based on the visitors mobile browser rather than device. We personally found this plugin working very well on Enfew sister sites and are planning to implement in on our blog as well (this might result nice tutorial for our readers). The main attraction is a simplicity. No wonder it scores 4.8 starts out of 5 on the official WordPress plugins site.
PHP mobile redirect for WordPress
Talking about simplicity this is another simple plugin redirecting to the mobile version of your WordPress site based on the visitors device. You can customize this plugin so it gives you visitors an option to go back top full site instead of its mobile version.
WordPress Mobile CSS
And finally WordPress plugin which changes your web site CSS style sheet based on the visitors web browser and the device. This option of course gives you a chance to style your web sites to suit different device types and browsers but we failed to understand why it is different from responsive web design themes you can create or purchase for WordPress based web sites. In such case you will not need WordPress plugin at all and in the single CSS file you can specify styling for different screen sizes. Either way we leave it for you our readers to decide.
