Some questions about mobile responsiveness?

[benjamin]

I got an email from Google about the mobile responsiveness of my site and these were the issues raised.

Viewport not configured
Small font size
Touch elements too close
Content not sized to viewport

I'm just wondering if just changing the themes to one that is mobile responsive can fix all of them.

[CleanPageDom]

Hi there

Depending on how much (if any) customisation you'd done to your current theme, yes - if you switched to a responsive theme, these problems should all be taken care of. You might need to recreate menus and do some other housekeeping, though.

Thanks
Dom

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Let’s build a website together…

[benjamin]

It's the housekeeping that worries me.
It took me quite a while to make the site look neat and tidy and the thought o doing it all over again bothers me.
I switched to the sample child theme for now and the site has lots of white empty spaces.
Things are so far apart and the the homepage does not fit in without the need for scrolling.
Hopefully the theme I want to get will have an easier solution to this without editing codes.

[CleanPageDom]

Just watch out for some of the newer ones (such as Parallax Pro, Cafe Pro, Altitude Pro) as they have widgetized front pages, so you'd need to code up the home pages through Widgets. You should stick to the more blog-style layouts maybe?

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Let’s build a website together…

[wheelingit]

I totally get the pain involved in switching themes. If you decide to switch themes chose a "mobile responsive" child theme, or just custom code the sample Genesis one.

If you don't want to handle that right now another alternative is to KEEP your current theme and just install a mobile-friendly plugin. The latter is not ideal, but could be a stop-gap solution for you while you decide if you really want to switch themes again.

These are the two I've used in the past
1/ Jetpack - if you have the jetpack plugin on your blog just "active" the mobile tab. That should render a very basic, mobile friendly version of your blog for mobile devices.

2/ WPTouch - another plugin that will generate a mobile-friendly version of your blog for mobile devices. The free version works fine, or you can upgrade to the pro for more advanced.

[benjamin]

I want a widgetized front page. How can I know if a theme has that? I'm trying to decide between Focus Pro and Prose but I do not want the continuous blog roll on the home page which both of them seem to have. I'd like a home page when I can replace that with widgets which I did with my old lifestyle theme. Not the new Lifestyle theme or the lifestyle pro theme. If not then set it to show just one blog post instead, the latest post.

The layout of Parallax and altitude is not suitable for my kind of site and I prefer the one in Focus and Prose. That is if the demos are a 100% depiction what the theme will look like by default.

[benjamin]

What are the challenges with using a plugin to make the site mobile responsive?

[wheelingit]

As far as challenges go with using the mobile plug-in, the main thing you're going to face is not much control over the way your blog looks on mobile. Both Jetpack & WPTouch put out a pretty standard format, and you can't change it too much.

As for the widget thing I'm no expert since I don't actually use the front-page widget format on my own blog, but can't you just use Lifestyle Pro and limit the widget to ONE post? I'm using Lifestyle Pro on my blog and it seems to allow me that option, although I admit I haven't played with it much.

[Author]

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