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LostInParadise's avatar

What do I need to do to adapt my Web site to mobile devices?

Asked by LostInParadise (31902points) April 7th, 2016

I have a Web site for high school level math. It is mostly text with some illustrations. You can see it here I used a freeware tool for creating the Web pages.

Google’s Web site rankings take mobile friendliness into account and they have an online site evaluater. My site did not do very well. I like talking about math, but do not care particularly for the intricacies of Web page design. Are there some simple basic things that I can do to improve my site’s mobility, like settings for font and image size? Does DreamWeaver or other commercial applications optimize for mobile devices?

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15 Answers

DoNotKnowMuch's avatar

(Link is broken. But it appears to be: mathed.org.)

You could either try to use a mobile framework like bootstrap and do this yourself, or you could move all the content into a simple Wordpress site with a responsive theme/template.

johnpowell's avatar

http://i.imgur.com/USB1Rak.jpg

iPad, iPhone 6, Moto E

add <meta name=“viewport” content=“initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1”> to the head.

http://i.imgur.com/7gkyGOH.png

And I love math. And I like the html/css nerdery so let me know if you want me to spruce up your site. I like minimalism. It wouldn’t take much to make it appear a bit more modern.

imrainmaker's avatar

The site should be responsive meaning it should look fine across multiple devices be it pc, mobile, tablet etc. This can be achieved using bootstrap as mentioned above.

johnpowell's avatar

The site is basic HTML and Tables. Bootstrap is like fishing with a nuclear bomb.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Personally rewrite the page for mobile and adapt that to a PC web page. Long paragraphs and HTML to a fable is not mobile friendly.

gorillapaws's avatar

My preference is to have 2 versions of the site. A stripped-down simple mobile version with only the most important content. Plus an easy way to access the full site on a mobile device if the user wants that experience. It’s frustrating as hell when I’m browsing the web with a giant iPad pro and being forced into an interface designed for a 4” phone that won’t let me see the normal site because my iPad is considered “mobile.”

LostInParadise's avatar

@johnpowell , Do you think that you could fix up my site so that it will be acceptable to Google? I very much appreciate the offer, and I may take you up on this, if you don’t think it would be too much of an imposition.

@Tropical_Willie , @gorillapaws, Are you saying that I can’t have a site that is acceptable for both iPhones and tablets? I don’t use an iPhone to access the Web. It strikes me as strange that anybody would want to any serious Web browsing using such a small screen, but I guess that just puts me behind the times.

gorillapaws's avatar

@LostInParadise Here’s a link to our surgical practice’s mobile website so you can see what I’m talking about: m.richmondveincenter.com. Notice the link to the full site. For our patients, on a phone, they most likely want to call us or get directions, but we want them to be able to access the full site if they want because some patients do use their phones like computers (some only have phones).

LostInParadise's avatar

What you did makes perfectly good sense in your situation. Unfortunately, I do not see a way of applying it to my site.

reijinni's avatar

I have seen the source of your website. I suggest you use <ul> instead of <table> for your links and save <table> for forms.

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LostInParadise's avatar

I looked at the suggestions that Google made. I figured it should not be too difficult to make corrections since the format of the Web pages is fairly simple. Google recommended putting the following tag in the head section, which they said would keep the text from getting too small on mobile apps:

<meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0”>

I don’t know why this should be necssary, but I did as they said and when I ran Google’s test, the page passed. I am hoping that this corrects the problem and that my Web traffic will be going up.

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