Boards.ie on the go

Rattlehead_ie

Hi Guys,

Was just wondering, seeing as Boards has grown and is now a huge social network for many people and along with the development of technology, mainly phones (N95, Xda) would it be viable to produce a mobile version of the board?

Now I know from experience with other forum software (IP.Board and S.M) that this can be difficult or very restricting and it can also mean the requirements / demands on the database are increased and can take its toll. Does vBulletin have the option of producing a lo-fi version of itself. Take for example RLLMUK Gaming Forum although I would estimate larger than Boards (I could be wrong) you notice that there is both a mobile and a normal hi-fi version of the board.

Any thoughts or ideas on this? I for one would like to see it. (Personally because at the moment my PC blew up so I'm relying on my Xda and work PC). I know a lot of people maybe behind firewalls or proxy so can't access the site, so via their phone might be a good alternative!

6th

I tought this existed for Boards already?

BuffyBot

Yup - mobile skin gives this option

Gordon

There may be a sort of permanent link but for now all I see is a template change. If you go to the top menu to boards.ie>change styles>mobile then that should give you a navigable solution.

There may be a way of doing it with archives or a different system but I don't know of it off hand.

Rattlehead_ie

6th wrote: »

I tought this existed for Boards already?

After a bit more searching I might have found it
I had to go through the archive to then click on PDA? but by looks of it, its up to date. Now to test it I suppose.

Random

Someone requests this every second day. Let's get a proper mobile theme please

Shiminay

Boards automatically serves the mobile skin to me when I browse on my Axim, so I thought this was always the way.

DeVore

So I had been told. Can people feedback what they see on their mobiles?

DeV.

stevenmu

Using Pocket IE on Windows Mobile 5, I see boards.ie, only smaller

It initially came up with the default 'white' skin. The combo box at the bottom of the screen is available to change skins. A great feature is that the cookie used to store which skin you use is different to the cookie which stores your login details etc. This means both that yo ucan have a different skin on your mobile and on your desktop, and that it doesn't matter if you're logged in or not, it always uses the right skin for that device.

Using the mobile skin gives a really fast loading plain white background black text screen with few/no images. It resizes to the small screen size very well. It doesn't show as much info, e.g. the forum view doesn't show who the last poster was for each thread or what time the last post was, but thats no big deal, it's probably actually better like that. The only real problem with the mobile skin is navigation, there's no top navigation menu, and the forum list (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/index.php) will give links for the main forums but only text for the subforums, for e.g. looking at the tech category (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=5) gives links to Open Source, Programming and Security, but everything else is just displayed as text meaning you can't click on it.

The minimalist skin seems to load a bit quicker than the others, not as quick as the mobile skin. It keeps the full layout though, showing all the information you'd normally see. It doesn't resize as well to the small screen as mobile, you often have to scroll sideways to read a full line, but not by a huge amount. Navigation works much better, the forums list displays links for everything. The top navigation even works if you're not logged in showing the static links for each cat.

Actually I'll post some screenies later, they'll make a bit more sense

Oryx

LG U970 with 3g. I dont know much about skins and mobiles and stuff. All I can tell you is this phone tries to load the page much as it appears on my pc, and generally its slow and times out. The page allows you to enter your login details, but I have never managed to actually get it to log in. It freezes.

6th

KtK wrote: »

LG U970 with 3g. I dont know much about skins and mobiles and stuff. All I can tell you is this phone tries to load the page much as it appears on my pc, and generally its slow and times out. The page allows you to enter your login details, but I have never managed to actually get it to log in. It freezes.

Same for me on my Nokia 6300.

faceman

6th wrote: »

Same for me on my Nokia 6300.

and for me on the N73

Bard

Ditto here on Opera Mini 4 on the K800i - tries to load the same (standard) version as I see on my PC - which is too slow.

TerrorFirmer

when I used my SP5 it loaded the main regular page. Which worked fine, but it's hard trying to scroll all over the shop!

Older Symbian phones/SE phones don't have enough memory to cope with full size pages...

humanji

DeVore wrote: »

So I had been told. Can people feedback what they see on their mobiles?

DeV.

I've a lovely picture of me and my mate. We're in Berlin for New Year's and he has his arm around me, and we're cheering. Hope this helps.

BanzaiBk

On my BB Pearl it autoselects the mobile skin and runs okish.

Vokes

DeVore wrote:

So I had been told. Can people feedback what they see on their mobiles?

I use the Blue skin for boards on my laptop.

And on my Archos 605, it doesn't auto-select the Mobile skin, the browser will just use the Blue skin once logged in.

AlmightyCushion

If you want to go straight to the forums index page with the mobile skin as the skin selected the save the following url to your bookmarks on your mobile.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/?styleid=40

That will open the forum index page and change the style to the mobile style.

There are a few things missing from the mobile style. The button for replying to a PM isn't there. I don't think there is a quote button either. Any new buttons that were added in the upgrade (multi-quote etc.) don't seem to be there either.

Edit: Just noticed that if you try to search when you are not logged in, the nospam question isn't there.