Mobile web development; the basics
Mobile Web Development "The Basics"
Looking to develop a mobile version of your website? Here are a few basics that can get you started or at least help you on your way…. Introducing 3ac’s guide to mobile web development.
First of all, building a mobile web site isn’t hugely different than building a normal website. The important aspect to remember is formatting the site to fit mobile device screens both visually and from a loading point of view. Which means keeping things basic. Mobile users do not like to be hanging around waiting for huge pages of images to load, that’s not what the mobile web is about. (Check out our mobile web development category for more info on this subject)
So lets crack on and get your code right. XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) is a hypertextual computer language standard designed specifically for mobile phones and other resource-constrained devices. To validate this, your mobile pages must contain one of the following DTD (Document Type Declaration) or DOCTYPE depending on which version you wish to follow:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.1//EN" "http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile11.dtd"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.2//EN" "http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile12.dtd">
We prefer to use the wapforum.org DTD. (The top one)
From here you can construct your mobile web pages using standard XHTML code and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to make your site look more aesthetically pleasing.
A great example of a well built mobile site for fast and efficient mobile viewing is Maxim Magazine’s site http://m.maxim.com/ – Notice how they use a simple design of four or so images with brief text links/descriptions which load up simple text pages allowing for speedy mobile surfing. Nothing too flash or pretty, just sticking to the basics.
Hosting the mobile version of your website either a a completely new domain or a sub-domain of your existing website is up to you and doesn’t make a huge amount of difference. Here are some examples of how you can do it, which we find best:
- http://www.yourwebsite.com/mobile
- http://m.yourwebsite.com
- http://yourwebsite.mobi
If I had to pick I would say host your mobile site on a dot mobi domain. Dot Mobi domains clearly tell people they are for mobile use. They have certain guidelines for mobile web development which must be adhere too for you to develop them in the first place and they give protection in mobile search from operators transcoders which can have an adverse affect on SEO for example. To register a dot mobi domain name I recommend using 1and1.
Once you have your mobile site up and running you will need to create your mobile sitemaps and submit them to the relevant search engines to tell them your site is. Here is a great XML site map generator which I would recommend using > XML SITE MAP GENERATOR
Some other great mobile resources include:
- Mobile Billing and Analytics – Bango.com
- Mobile Web Development Forum – MobiForge.com
- Mobile Advertising – Admoda.com
If you have a browse at our links on the right hand side of the blog too you will find a load more cool sites about mobile web development and obviously this blog itself is dedicated to it, so have a look round the whole site, you may find something useful.
And as a little Brucie Bonus here is a list of 10 mobile web directories to get you started off with your mobile SEO and link building, these come from our huge collection of mobile directories and search portals which we have cataloged along the way. But we’re not going to give the rest, you’ll have to do the leg work just like we did!
- http://dotmobietc.dirlink.mobi/
- http://www.searchgoesmobile.com/add_url.html
- http://mobilinks.com/go/submit
- http://twilightwap.com/elite/go/submit
- http://five-alive.mobi/index.php?suggestalink=yes
- http://www.skweezer.com/dir.aspx
- http://www.surf-my.mobi/
- http://love-my.mobi/
- http://cremin.mobi/
- http://mobidomains.mobi/
Enjoy!
Gary
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About Me
Hi, I'm Gary Taylor. I have been developing domain names since 2002. In 2008 I won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Midlands Business Awards. I am an industry blogger and have recently spoken at conferences like ThinkVisibility.com and SAScon.co.uk. I live in Birmingham with my dog Alfie and love to play the guitar. You can follow me on Twitter or connect with me on Linked In.
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