Apr 22
Veerle’s blog goes mobile
2009 at 06.02 pm posted by Veerle Pieters
The folks of Mobify contacted me a few weeks ago with the request if they could create a mobile version of my blog. A mobile version of the blog is one of those things that got moved from my ‘to-do’ list to the ‘one day’ list. This request sounded like music to my ears, and of course I was really curious about the outcome, but first, some introduction…
What is Mobify?
Mobify is service that will create a fully functional, lightweight mobile version of your site. It all works via an online tool in your browser. You first click the site blocks that should show up on mobile. Then you adjust the CSS styling and, if needed, add more mobile-specific content such as maps for example. Once you're finished, the service will activate a URL for your site like m.yoursite.com.
My blog's mobile version
Since about a week now, my blog is now viewable in a mobile version on v.duoh.com. I was very curious what the outcome would be because about a week earlier, they e-mailed me that they've just finished the A List Apart mobile version, viewed on m.alistapart.com. So I immediately checked it out and I was in total awe. It's really gorgeous.
One week later, I viewed the mobile version of my site on my iPhone and things looked the way I like my blog to look on the iPhone or other mobile device. Since my blog doesn't particular use a simple design to transform into a mobile version I was really happily surprised by the result and work the Mobify team did. Again, a big thank to the team. I'm really happy how this turned out.
My blog is featured in the Mobify gallery. As you can see from the info on this page, they've been able to shrink the size of the homepage from 93KB to 19KB. That's amazing and definitely a job well done!
More info
I haven't used the service myself since the Mobify team did everything for me. So I can't share any experience on that part, but from what I can tell it sure looks promising. For more info, check out the features or pricing, or simply try out the demo for free. They have also a screencast .
24served
1
Congratulations!!! It looks amazing on my iphone ;-)
2
A very cool idea, but from a content and search engine point of view, is this duplicating content? or will Google not index these pages? I guess you could set up a robots.txt declaration for it.
Unfortunately I don’t have an iPhone yet to browse the site, but the screenshots look very impressive.
3
looks great on my ipod touch! Congrats… isn’t this manually possible by adding a @mobile link in the css file?
4
Hey guys!
Veerle, thanks again for the coverage.
Paul, this is actually very good for your SEO because both URL structure and the domain name is preserved. The content is never touched as well, all you see on the mobile view is fetched from Veerle’s main site.
This is how Facebook, CNN, Digg and all the big guys do it (m.domain.com)
Cheers,
Igor
Mobify
5
Interesting. I have been using a wordpress add on that automatically creates an iphone app like theme for mobile users. Maybe this is something I would consider later on down the road if my site stays active.
6
Good work!It looks wonderful:)
7
cool and neat. mobify is the first one that i got to know through your blog. I never see any company like mobify - perhaps it is only the one working on mobile thing?
The mobile version looks similar to your current blog on website. it is consistent.
Thank you for introducing Mobify. I will try this one.
8
It looks and works great. Well done!
9
The iPhone version looks almost better than the big browsers one. Good job!
10
cool and neat. mobify is the first one that i got to know through your blog. I never see any company like mobify - perhaps it is only the one working on mobile thing?
The mobile version looks similar to your current blog on website. it is consistent.
Thank you for introducing Mobify. I will try this one.
11
got a bug in this page http://v.duoh.com/blog/archives/
Archive by category and by date images are inverted
keep up the cool blogging :)
12
Excellent! My iPhone loves you more… and so do I!
13
Maybe the header image could cover all the header when the phone is in horizontal (wider screen).
But I loved!
14
Wow, nice. I have a Blackberry Storm, and it looks great. I will be coming here quite frequently in my daily travels on the train!
15
It does look amazing! I have been looking for information on how to get this done to my site and am already checking out Mobify. Thanks!
16
It’s so nice that there are folks out there to do this for us. Especially when you don’t even have a mobile device to test on!
Do Mobify do anything about laundry?
17
Personally I’d rather create a mobile stylesheet rather than putting the whole thing on a separate subdomain.
...but that’s just me.
18
Sweet Veerle! Always had a -not that you can call surfing regular pages on an iPhone hard- but less easy time reading your blog on my phone (not only your blog, in general just blogs and news sites), but this is just what it needs to be!
Greets.
19
Nice work those guys of mobify did :) it’s only, the total width of the iPhone is 320px too bad the header image extends this width
20
Hi, I’m just curious how many visits from mobile devices (as %) do you have daily? If not a secret…
Have a nice day!
21
I have been meaning to use something like Mobify for quite some time, but like you, I keep putting it off as a non-critical priority.
After seeing what a favorable experience it has been for you, this just got bumped up on my to do list.
Thanks!
22
Maybe I missed this, but I think what would really make the service useful is if you could sign up and view screenshots of your site in each of the 4,000 devices they say they support. One of the biggest hurdles in building mobile sites is handling the ton of different user-agents out there for mobile devices.
23
I think that the mobile web is going to take off in a major fashion. as iphones becomes more common and the costs will come down then the usage will rise. The use of CSS though is vital, table based sites just don’t work, that is why we are here, to learn from the master!
24
Looks great. I’m not very happy with my current wordpress add-on for mobile viewers. This might be a solution.