30 Days to Being a Better Blogger
Day 17: Mobilize Your Blog
Raise your hand if you’re within reach of a a device capable of connecting to the internet for about 90% of your waking hours. Ok ok, all of you put your hands down. Between gaming devices, handhelds and mobile phones all being able to connect to the internet, there are so many ways for people to soak up the good stuff you write on your blog… besides just through your computer’s browser! However, do you have any idea what your blog looks like on a mobile device? Have you considered the potential for you to have a mobile audience, now and in the future?
Today’s challenge is going to be to prepare your blog to be viewed via mobile devices. Trust me, I understand if this isn’t a priority for everybody. But you never know how many people may be visiting you while on the move, why not make it easy for them to do so? I know my blog tends to attract a more high tech geeky audience (you know who you are), so maybe it’s not too surprising that I had over 400 hits from Symbian based mobile phones and Sony PlayStation Portables in September. Don’t worry, it’s much easier to make your blog mobile compliant than you might think.
While there are dozens of ways to make your blog mobile, we’re going to focus on three: 1) Taking advantage of plugins (if compatible with your blog) 2) Using a third party site to display your RSS content in a mobile compliant manner and 3) Using MoFuse to create a mobile mirror.
If you happen to be using Wordpress, you have some extremely simple choices that will ensure that your blog is able to be read by anybody on the go. Alex King and Andy Moore have both created plugins that you can use by just installing them and clicking “Activate”. There’s even a plugin specifically for making your site iPhone compliant. The nice thing about using these plugins is that when mobile users come visit your blog, they’ll automatically be shifted over to the version of the site that is optimized for them.
The other two solutions require setting something up and then letting people know about it. You’ll have to provide a link somewhere that says “View the mobile version of this site” and shuffle people over to what you’ve created. Not a big deal, but not quite as elegant.
The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of a couple of Google tools designed for parsing web pages for mobile consumption. If you visit this tiny little Google application, it will generate a mobile compatible version of your site. Punch in your domain name, and you’re in business. Grab that URL, and make it available somewhere on your blog. Mine looks like this. Alternatively, you can use the mobile version of Google Reader to massage your RSS feed and make it available to mobile users. To do this, just take the following address and add your RSS feed to the end of it.
http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/ + http://feeds.feedburner.com/teach42/weblog = http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/teach42/weblog. Once again, provide a link to that page somewhere on your site and people can get to a mobile version of your blog with a single click. And it doesn’t look half bad at all!
Looking for something with a few more power user features? Then you’ll love MoFuse.com. Sign up for an account, put in your blog URL and RSS feed, and within minutes you have a custom mirror of your site. You can take a look at Teach42’s MoFuse here. You can very easily just do the same thing the previous tip recommended, which is providing a link to your MoFuse mobile page. However, you can also make available all sorts of uber-geeky options that mobile users will freak out over. Things like adding a widget into your sidebar where people can enter their mobile number and have a link to your blog sent to them via SMS. Or display a QR code that links to your blog. Or add a chicklet that links to it. Or any combination of those. If you’re using a Wordpress blog, or have the ability to add PHP code to your header (you know who you are), you can even provide automatic re-direction for any mobile visitors that visit your site. And yes, you have the ability to create a special iPhone version for all you Apple fan boys and girls!
One last advanced tip for all of you who host your own blog and want to get really geeky. If you want to go the extra mile, you can even create your own mobile URL, using the standard m.Example.com formula. It’s really not that hard. You just need to add a cname record that links m.yoursite.com to whatever link you’re using for your mobile site. This page by Google has tips for doing so for a great many common hosts. MoFuse provides some instructions for connecting up your own domain in this way. Once you make a change like this, it takes about 24-48 hours for the change to actually go through, so be patient. I’m making m.teach42.com point to a mobile version of this site tonight.
So there’s a few possible solutions for mobilizing your blog. And this doesn’t even touch POSTING to your blog via your mobile device! That’s a story for another day (won’t be a part of this challenge).
Have you ever visited any blogs from your mobile phone? Did you check out your own? Do you anticipate having any mobile readers, now or in the near future? Any tips for using mobile devices for accessing the internet? Share your tips in the comments below!
- RSS Bigotry
- DIY URL Shrinking: We don’t need no stinkin’ TinyURL
- Day 9: Burn Baby Burn! Your Feed, That Is
- Day 1: All about the “About” page
- Day 15: Find Thyself
Day 17: Mobilize Your Blog
11/17/2008
[...] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptRaise your hand if you’re within reach of a a device capable of connecting to the internet for about 90% of your waking hours. Ok ok, all of you put your hands down. Between gaming devices, handhelds and mobile phones all being able to connect to the internet, there are so many ways for people to soak up the good stuff you write on your blog… besides just through your computer’s browser! However, do you have any idea what your blog looks like on a mobile device? Have you considered the potentia [...]
mwright103
11/17/2008
Day 17: Mobilize Your Blog /Teach42/ – Raise your hand if you’re within reach of a a device capable of … http://tinyurl.com/56n9s4
Martha Thornburgh
11/17/2008
Funny, I just moved into the world of mobile computing this week when I got a Blackberry Curve. Used your little Google Gadget and added the link. Thanks.
Martha Thornburgh´s most recent blog post.. Educators to End Hunger and Poverty
[...] This challenge encourages us to mobilize our blog. I added the Mobile Wordpress plugin before MACUL 2008 so that I could play around with blogging using my Palm Centro. It worked pretty well, until I got a phone call in the middle of blogging and it lost everything that I had typed! I haven’t really used it since but may have to revisit it for MACUL 2009! I will be presenting, “Learn how to make your Online Experience Pop!” See you there! Share and Enjoy: [...]
Pam Shoemaker
11/18/2008
I used the Google gadget and added a link to my sidebar. I hope it works!
Pam Shoemaker´s most recent blog post.. Week 2: 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger
Dan Callahan
11/18/2008
Thanks for reminding me that when I was having some plugin troubles my iPhone plugin was disabled! I also installed that other mobile phone plugin, but I have no way to check that out, so if anybody with something other than an iPhone could go to my site on a mobile browser and let me know, that would be awesome.
Dan Callahan´s most recent blog post.. One way I use Diigo
Sean Nash
11/18/2008
Wow… almost 2% of my traffic of nearly 1000 visits… is from the iPhone platform.
I had better take a look at the Google option, like in your demo. I am thinking this notion will only become more important in the near future!
Sean
Sean Nash´s most recent blog post.. How do you spell constructivism?
Michael Barbour
11/21/2008
Steve,
I’m just catching up here, but I was wondering… These WordPress plug-ins, are they for folks who host their own WordPress blog or can those of us who use wordpress.com use them too?
MKB
Michael Barbour´s most recent blog post.. Friday Funnies
[...] Day sixteen in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series was yesterday and asked us to look at Day 17: Mobilize Your Blog. Essentially, we were asked to consider how our blog looked on a mobile device and then assist [...]
[...] Day 17: Mobilize Your Blog – Teach42 [...]
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
10 Comments