My general advice to my clients is not to create a separate mobile site unless there is a compelling reason to do so. I build and maintain WordPress sites and there are a lot of themes that adapt well between stationary and mobile screens.  It is even easy to search themes by that specific feature. I have checked out many of the mobile-ready WordPress themes on both my smallish Android phone and my Nook Tablet and they look good. I also find that most of the time, I end up clicking on the "full site" link on mobile sites because the mobile version just doesn't provide the info I am looking for. 

-Eva

Hi, Jayne.

This recent post on NetSquared might shed some light on things, as it covers some of the basics of responsive design in conjunction with WordPress. It also links to a another good post about the basics of responsive design in general. These are both by Bari Samad, digital communications consultant at TechSoup.

Incidentally, we also recently asked our Facebook friends what sort of mobile strategy, if any, they have for their websites. Here's what they said.

Does your org have a mobile strategy for its website? Is it considering responsive design?

Jayne,

If you want a starting point you could checkout Foundation at http://foundation.zurb.com/

I strongly recommend learning the basics of SASS http://sass-lang.com/ and jquery http://jquery.com/ as starting advanced skills that you will need to use to do this.

You will also need to start thinking about Adaptive Images as well, as you not only have small iphone3 dislays but the "retina" displays that expect high quality images http://adaptive-images.com/ is a solution with several technical issues, but shows the mechanics of what you need to do.

Good luck

Yeah, again - I just don't have time to learn to be a web designer/programmer. I've always maintained my own web site, and been able to keep it accessible for people that don't have the latest, greatest computers and browsers, or that use assistive technology. But I think all the mobile tech is more than I can address by myself... and there are SO many people accessing web sites almost exclusively by smart phones rather than devices with large screens - I know I'm frustrating folks by not having a web site they can review with such easily.

Something for nonprofits to consider....

Found this recently:

MobLab Tip o' the Day from Greenpeace - @MobilisationLab on Twitter:

This post from Mashable gives you some of the quick and easy tools at your disposal for getting that mobile look for your site: 

• If you don't want to start from scratch, there are templates you can choose from goMobi
• If your focus is your landing page, Landr is one tool to check out 
• If you're after simple, easy but also customizable, there's DudaMobile

Read the full post at Mashable: 7 Tools for Creating an Optimized Mobile Website 

Has anyone tried any of these tools for your nonprofit, library, school, government agency, etc.? How did you like it?

Yea I have problems with that often. Most of the

time when I'm on my iPhone, I have to click on mobile sites

because the regular website isn't compatible on a mobile phone.

One way you can make your web page well suited for the

iPhone is by degrading your actual web page. Anything beyond XHTML basic

will be great. It's important not to make anything too tiny and

also to use JavaScript carefully and hide them to make it easier to navigate.

-Rehanuma

There are some great tutorials on YouTube if you got a few hours and follow them then you should have no problem getting a responsive website up and running