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WPTouch’s Problem Is Lack Of Vision
Posted January 3, 2011, 11:08 pm in Mobile Plugins
WPTouch is currently the most popular WordPress mobile plugin available right now and I am not sure why.
WPTouch’s mobile detection capability is lacking. Compared to all of the available mobile plugins, it is by far one of the worst when it comes to providing a universal mobile experience.
I am baffled as to how such a plugin can have over 1.5 million downloads.
It boils down to this, they created a pretty theme that looks great on advanced smart phones all-the-while giving the website owner a utility to control the look and feel of the theme. That coupled with the fact that they were one of the first to release a mobile plugin means they aligned themselves perfectly in an industry that is new enough that most people don’t realize what is important in a mobile plugin.
It is like building a community center far out in the country. A few people get to enjoy it, but building it in a well-populated area would be smarter.
Unfortunately for thousands of WordPress blog owners, the WPTouch plugin is and has been a “Most Popular” download on the home page of the WordPress Plugins page for months now. Because of this, they may not find other mobile plugins that provide a much better user experience.
You can’t really blame WPTouch though, they do not claim to do anything that the plugin cannot. It does everything they claim it will. It is unfortunately the fault of thousands of WordPress blog owners who do not understand the importance of a mobile plugin that can detect and give a great user experience to thousands of mobile devices, instead of 20-30.
As mobile plugins trend upwards and WordPress blog owners education themselves as to the importance of catering to all mobile devices, WPTouch will either have to adapt or fall to the wayside.
Damon January 5, 2011
I recently realized the limitations of WPTouch when designing a client’s website. I found that the caching plugin WP Super Cache would not allow users to switch between Mobile view and Full Site view. This was not an issue for WPTouch or WP Super Cache, but I found it frustrating and set out to find my own solution. I ended up using W3 Total Cache (way better then Super Cache), which allows for User Agent setting to point to a different theme, which I thought was brilliant. I like this idea of having the User Agents mechanisms being built into the cache plugin, because they both go hand-in-hand in my mind, but I can see how segregating their code would be beneficial too.
Read more about it here: http://colorfultones.com/2010/12/grappling-with-mobile-content/
John Stamos January 5, 2011
I couldn’t agree more.
I recently had to switch to W3 Total Cache for this same reason.
Though I have to say that the user agent mechanism didn’t impress me as much because user agent detection is a plugin in and of itself.
For example, with the WP Mobile Detector, it uses a unique pattern of matching to allow it to detect 5,000+ mobile phones. It is impossible to copy and paste user agents into the W3 Total Cache.
Luckily for me, I can de-activate the W3 Total Cache by setting a cookie that only exists on mobile devices. In the W3 Total Cache Page Cache Settings, they allow you to specify the name of the cookie that disables the cache mechanism.
That was very smart on their part.
Viktor Leberecht February 13, 2011
I am using wp super cache because w3 total has “totally” wrecked my website thzough it was installed correct, and even after uninstalling it still left all kinds of stuff srewing up my admin pages, which i only found out by accident.
So i have switched to wp super cache which works perfect. But as is see this post and the comments my question is: does your plugin, which seems great to me, work with wp super cache?
Kind regards, Viktor