LightSpeed on WordPress Mobile

• WPtouch Pro used for Shape Mag
• WPtouch Pro and BuddyPress
• WordPress Mobile with WPtouch Pro (Showcases some of our work on Runner’s World)
• Piggy Pro: Mobile WordPress eCommerce made easy
• LightSpeed at the Social Media World Forum (some interesting stats on mobile use in South Africa)
• Mobile Tools and themes for BuddyPress needed
• WP Mobile Detector Premium Plugin Review
• PluginBuddy Mobile WordPress plugin Review
• Responsive Design for WordPress
• VIDEO: WordPress as a mobile Publishing Platform (a talk by Matt Geri at WordCamp 2011)

This review is focused on the PluginBuddy Mobile WordPress plugin and I used Safari’s developer tools to render the theme using the Iphone, Ipad and Ipod mobile client.

PluginBuddy Mobile Requirements

PluginBuddy Mobile requires WordPress 2.9.0 or newer. Custom menus are available from WordPress 3.0+

PluginBuddy Mobile Features

Mobile from PluginBuddy has four mobile themes to choose from, supports a wide range of devices and allows you to apply a different theme to each device, giving you the flexibility to customize the user experience for specific users.

Installation is easy and once the Mobile plugin has been installed the options can be accessed from the Mobile panel in the backend.

PluginBuddy Mobile themes

Pluginbuddy Mobile comes packed with four mobile themes to choose from:

• PluginBuddy Mobile – Banner 1.0.1
• PluginBuddy Mobile – Starter CMS 1.0.1
• PluginBuddy Mobile – Timber 1.0.1
• PluginBuddy Mobile – Typewriter 1.0.1

Each Theme allows you to upload your own custom header.

Banner Theme Full screen

Timber Theme Full screen

Typewriter Theme Full screen

The themes are partly responsive and the Style Manager allows you to customize the colors of various elements in the Body, Navigation, Headlines, and Footer areas of the theme.

Partly Responsive Mobile Theme

PluginBuddy Mobile Style Manager

Devices Supported

• Android Devices

• Apple iPad

• Apple iPhone

• Apple iPod, Touch

• BlackBerry Device

• LG Phones

• Motorola Phones

• Nintendo DS

• Nintendo Wii

• Nokia Phones

• Opera Mini Devices

• Palm Devices

• Sony Ericson Phones

• Samsung Phones

• Sony Playstation Portable

• Sony Playstation 3

• Windows CE Device, Mobile IE

• Apple Safari (desktop; for development)

• Google Chrome (desktop; for development)

• Microsoft Internet Explorer (desktop; for development)

• Mozilla Firefox (desktop; for development)

• Opera (desktop; for development)

Mobile Settings

The Mobile Settings allow you to toggle on and off the display of the link to the non-mobile site on your mobile theme.

Here you can also add additional HTML to your Header, such as your Google analytics tracking code.

PluginBuddy Mobile Settings

Support

Mobile from PluginBuddy offers support documentation contained in the iThemes codex with information on Theme creation, customization and known Plugin conflicts

Conclusion

PluginBuddy’s Mobile WordPress plugin offers a lot of room for customization across devices and the ability to offer unique mobile experiences to different device users. I personally found the amount of choices bewildering and the ease of use pales in comparison with other mobile plugins such as WP Mobile Detector. The Responsiveness of the themes also leaves a lot to be desired.

However, if your audience is largely mobile and you want to deliver a unique and varied experience to each different segmentation of mobile device users, Mobile from PluginBuddy could be the mobile plugin for you.

WPtouch Pro and LightSpeed

LightSpeed offers customized mobile websites using the WPtouch theming framework. Using WPtouch Pro we create a mobile optimized version of your website to give your visitors access to your website on the go. The WPtouch Pro plugin automatically transforms your WordPress website into a fast, user-friendly and stylish mobile application experience for smartphones.

Visitors that arrive on your website from a smartphone or other mobile device are shown the mobile version of your site, while visitors arriving on your website from a computer are shown the full website.

Mobile Devices supported include:

• iPad
• iPhone
• iPod touch
• Google Android
• Palm Pre/Pixi
• Samsung touch
• BlackBerry OS6 devices (Although we’ve managed to make BlackBerry OS V5 work too)

Note: I’ve added an extended list of User agents compatible with WPtouch Pro at the bottom of this post.

Other WPtouch Pro Features:

• The ability to link Google AdSense and Analytics accounts, enabling you to continue earning ad revenue and monitor how users access your site, even from mobile devices.
• It doesn’t need to use an extended url: example.com/mobile or example.mobi. It uses the same url as the website.
• Installation for the plugin is pretty easy:

1.  Download the plugin from Brave New Code
2. Upload the plugin through the plugin interface
3. Once uploaded you put in your licence and the plugin is activated.

NB! If a caching solution is installed (like W3totalcache) it is a good idea to turn off caching, as it cause problems with loading the theme into your browser. It is also best to enter the names of the of the mobile browser exception list.

In terms of configuration, once you get it right it is relatively maintenance free.

Some of the configuration options are:

• From the General page, you can customize your mobile site’s name, language, add custom advertising and statistics tracking, and more.
• You can backup your WPtouch settings and import them into any one of your other sites (This is handy as most sites will require the same settings).
• WPtouch Pro currently offers two mobile themes: the Default, and the Skeleton theme
• The theme allows for quite a few customizations for your site: Fonts, header styles, background themes, menus, custom icons and a lot more.
• Turn off the image as attachments setting to prevent double images from appearing.

WPtouch Pro in action on Runner’s World

We’ve recently used WPtouch Pro to develop a mobile theme for Runner’s World. This includes a section for Articles and the race calendar. Individual Race posts feature Google Maps and Social media sharing buttons.

Learn more about WPtouch Pro »

Other sites we’ve developed using WPtouch Pro include:

• Home Mag
• Mom to Mom
• SportsIllustrated – using the standard Classic wp-touch theme.

According to InMobi’s findings, 59% of South African users have now purchased at least one digital product through their mobile device. James Lamberti, Vice President Global Research & Marketing at InMobi, said that mobile commerce has become quite common in Africa, and that it is a very promising and thrilling opportunity for the consumer, retailer, and manufacturer as mobile shopping solutions will become more accessible, intelligent and compelling to use.

Mobile Commerce data on your Mobile device

We use the phenomenal WPtouch Pro plugin to create mobile versions of our WordPress websites for our clients. Now, Brave new Code, the same masterminds behind WPtouch Pro have recently released Piggy.

Piggy is a web-app that provides mobile access to bring sales data for your WordPress E-Commerce powered WordPress website straight to your mobile device. Sales Managers and Business owners can now have up to the minute sales information and stats on the go. It works on iOS and Android, is quick to install, easy to use and provides you with all the sales data you want to view as long as you are connected to the internet.

Other features include:

• Sales forecasting
• Live Updating
• Multiple Colour layouts
• Full support for 13 languages

Using WPtouch Pro and Piggy in combination you can optimize your website for Mobile, and stay on top of the data as your e-Commerce store takes off in the mobile market.

BuddyPress Integration

Shape Magazine required a solution that would enable their readers to access tailored content on the go. This included the ability to read and post recipes, training logs and food journals to their Shape profiles, and accessing the Shape Magazinecommunity from anywhere – the gym, office, beach or home.By using WPtouch, we were able to render a mobile version of their website that is viewable on any smartphone, extending their web presence to mobile devices. A custom Integration of BuddyPress and Wptouch, allowed us to enable the community features of BuddyPressfor the Shape mobile website. These community features include everything you expect from a social network, including personlized profiles, activity streams, friends, private messaging and journal (custom post type) posting.

Custom Warning Messages

The Future is Mobile – Are you?

Mobile internet access is growing at a staggering pace. In this changing technological environment it has become ever more prudent to have your WordPress powered business website mobile compatible in order to reach this expanding market of web savvy South Africans.

As reported in The Sunday Times this past Sunday, the sale of smartphones has just surpassed the sale of PCs for the first time. This was not expected to happen until 2012.

A recent study by Arthur Goldstuck’s World Wide Worx, the Mobility 2011 research project, reveals even more interesting facts. The project’s findings are that 39% of urban South Africans and 27% of rural users are now browsing the Internet on their phones. The study excludes “deep rural” users, and represents around 20-million South Africans aged 16 and above. This means that at least 6-million South Africans now have Internet access on their phones.

This is a bit of a jump from Internet World Stats 2009 statsistics that showed total (not just Mobile) South Africans with internet access to be at 5.3 million.

Increasingly, smartphones and mobile technologies such as tablet PCs are the first point of entry for many into the online world. Right now – and set to increase over the next couple of years –  people who have never had any contact with the internet are making their first contact through the use of mobile telephones. When taking into account that greater competition in the mobile handset market, specifically the market for smartphones, will be driving prices down for these devices, not having a web presence that is mobile device compatible seems like a big strategic over sight.

Really, in the past it has been said that if you don’t have a web presence, your business will lose out. This remains true, but now this has also shifted:

Having a web presence is good, but having a mobile compatible web presence is better.

WPtouch

At LightSpeed we use the impressive plugin, WPtouch to make our websites mobile compatible. WP Touch works by detecting supported devices like iPhones, iPads, Android, Blackberry and more, serving its optimized theme instead of your regular desktop theme. Visitors can always switch back to your desktop theme if they choose.

Recent clients have included Shape magazine, Mom2Mom and Runner’s World.

Shape magazine is one of our South African magazines with an excellent web savvy. Measured against other South African magazines shows Shape to rank #6 for media presence on Facebook and #20 on Twitter according to my estimated cross reference with the figures posted by Media Slut in their recent blog.

Shape magazine knows what it’s doing on the web, and at LightSpeed we know how to enable our clients to make the most of their online business strategy. Contact us for further information on a mobile compatible website for your business and take advantage of the mobile future.

I have noticed lately that all the major social media and social networking websites are coming out with a mobile version of their website hosted like this – m.socialsite.com – If you view it in a browser it looks like an extremely stripped down version of the main website. Click on these websites and see for yourself:

• http://m.facebook.com/
• http://m.twitter.com/
• http://m.flickr.com/
• http://m.youtube.com/
• http://m.linkedin.com/
• http://m.muti.co.za/
• http://m.last.fm/
• http://m.delicious.com/
• http://m.plaxo.com/
• http://m.pownce.com/

My suggestion is as follows:

• Create a theme for BuddyPress
• The theme needs to include with a bunch of mobile tools
• The tools should include a mobile optimized website at m.socialsite.com
• Users needs an easy way to upload photos and notes to the website via SMS and MMS messages
• Users should also be  able to receive new BuddyPress messages on their phones via SMS, but might be costly to implement.

A well-known South African blogger called Matthew Buckland wrote and awesome article on the future of the mobile internet. Read the article if you are interested in in what I am talking about.

I am going to write next about how I see a need for combining the mobile theme with a Jabber Client to allow users to chat anywhere, connect and grow the network in their geographic location.

Please give feedback?