Now that we've identified how we need our mobile site to work, let's have a look at some of the plugins available and how they might match up to our criteria. Once we've done that, we'll have a go at installing and configuring two of the most popular mobile plugins.
Note that this list is taken from the plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository at http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins in June 2012. As plugins are added to the repository and sometimes removed, the list may change over time.
|
Plugin |
Link |
Features |
Pros |
Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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WPtouch |
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WordPress Mobile Pack |
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Wapple Architect |
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Mobile Press |
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WP Mobile Detector |
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Note
A mobile switcher is a plugin (or functionality within a plugin), which detects when the site is being viewed on a mobile device and automatically switches to a theme which the site administrator defines. It normally detects the User Agent to do this.
A User Agent is an application, which accesses a website. Generally, this refers to a browser, but it can include screen readers, spiders, or any other application or programs that access websites.
Having looked at some of the most popular plugins and how they work, let's try setting two of them up—WPtouch and WordPress Mobile Pack. WPtouch is the most widely used mobile plugin.
WPtouch is used on a huge proportion of WordPress sites, and so the chances are that if you use a mobile to browse the web, you've seen it on some sites without even realizing.
WPtouch has a premium version with extra functionality, but here we will be working with the free version, available at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/. As of January 2012, this plugin had been downloaded nearly three million times, so that's a lot of websites!