Despite ‘responsive design’ being all the rage at the moment, I still think a well thought out, user friendly dedicated mobile site is still a great way to go.
Despite ‘responsive design’ being all the rage at the moment, I still think a well thought out, user friendly dedicated mobile site is still a great way to go.
When designing a responsive website, most designers will tend to design a desktop version first and then try and adapt it into a mobile ‘breakpoint’. Other designers won’t supply a mobile design at all and still request for the website to be responsive. With no planning or thought put into the mobile version, it could be a nightmare for developers to convert the site to responsive.
As a web developer, I would much rather (depending on the level of complexity) create a dedicated mobile version of a website as it is a lot easier to optimise it for a particular device.
There are plenty of WordPress plugins to claim to automatically convert designs to responsive, amongst other things, however I prefer a simple approach. Have one WordPress template appear for each device.
The plugin that I use for this is called Device Theme Switcher.
Depending on how you setup your WordPress site, you should still be able to have the user update their content once and have it change across all themes.