Posted by icanlocalize on September 21, 2010 at 12:29pm
We're thinking about moving our WP site to Drupal and making it more "mobile friendly" - meaning, when viewing with a mobile device, it will use most of the screen area for content and not for navigation. Hopefully, navigation can be split and use a different URL from the main content.
The most popular pages in our site are the iPhone localization and Android localization guides. These need to be preserved as closely as possible when migrating.
Any ideas for doing this move? Is there a Drupal module that can detect mobile devices and hook to the theme so that the output is better optimized for mobile screens?
Comments
My first thought is somewhat
My first thought is somewhat off-topic, but as a disclaimer: I'm in the process of moving my own WP blog to Drupal for a variety of reasons. That said, if making it more mobile-friendly is a big reason for thinking about switching, have you tried out the WP-Touch plugin? I know one of the guys who wrote it and if it's saying much, it's definitely one of the better WordPress plugins. http://www.bravenewcode.com/products/wptouch-pro/
(Insert rant here on the WP plugin development community vs Drupal-hosted projects, etc, etc.)
Another option would be to JUST do that in CSS with @media max-width stuff: http://lessframework.com
Now, I don't know if I totally agree with the philosophy of displaying the same HTML for a mobile device as on a desktop, and looking at your site, it's obvious that there's a lot going on that might not display on mobile terribly well if you just had a single column, and that ad might pose a bit of a translation problem--or worse, if you just did display:none, what's THAT going to do to your ad analytics?
Anyway. I'm looking for a project to use a separate @media stylesheet on and I haven't found one yet. (An informal poll of about 50 acquaintances, colleagues and friends revealed that about 15% of people with a monitor big enough could actually SEE the maximum column width of the Less Framework. Everyone else sets a narrower browser width.)
For actually outputting a different theme, I've used the "Mobile Plugin" module: http://drupal.org/project/mobileplugin
It works well, but I'm still not convinced of the cost/benefit of a separate mobile theme for most of us. (WP Touch plugin is easy, so I know a lot of WP bloggers use it.) That's why I keep coming back to @media and wondering if there's some better way.
WP to Drupal?
Sorry, I can not add anything useful to this discussion but would be interested in those reasons for switching from WP to Drupal.
I just went around the other way: switching from Drupal to Wordpress
Ok, I only needed a blog. But from a user-perspective Wordpress intuitive usage and the easy updating of plugins is a real benefit.
AND adding a mobile (iPhone) theme is so easy with wp-touch. I didn't find anything similar to that in Drupal. All the mobile theming modules are either outdated or not usable.
At least when I had a look three month ago.
And developing a mobile theme from the ground is something that really takes long.
According to my professional
According to my professional site, I build sites with WordPress and Drupal. As such, I'm frequently asked whether or not a site should be built with Drupal or with WordPress. For the most part, Drupal seems to have a reputation as being able to do anything. (If only!) WordPress, on the other hand...well, as you say, svogel, you just needed a blog.
And that's where WordPress shines. Out of the box, it's a far better platform to blog with than Drupal is, that's for sure--but that's because it's been focused on one thing: blogging. In the last few releases, it's finally branched out with some "true CMS" functionality, like D6-quality menus, as well as custom content types and taxonomies. ("Welcome to the club, WordPress.") I'd say about half the sites I've built with Drupal could've been done today with WordPress 3.0. That's pretty impressive.
And WP-Touch? Badass. Seriously.
So what about Drupal? Well, I like Views, I like CCK to actually handle those custom content types, and I like the fact that Drupal makes sense, for the most part. Sure, we've all had those, "what, are you kidding me?" moments when working with Drupal's code, but it's honestly a pretty decent effort--as I'm sure you'll agree. :) Further, Drupal's contrib modules are where it really shines. Drupal core is the boat, but contrib modules are Drupal's rudder.
So yeah, I like Drupal. I admit it. And WordPress? It's great, as long as you're not developing for it. WordPress' backend and database structure are a mess. Just...ouch. Seriously.
But beyond the 'angry old lady'-style ranting about coding style and the state of the WP contrib community that precipitated my decision to switch, I have three key reasons for doing so:
Also, I have this paranoid Malcom Gladwell-meets-phrenology idea that time spent learning WordPress is finite Brain SpaceTM taken away from things I'd rather spend my cognitive mana on: Drupal, UX and typography. So please do take my comments with that grain of salt.