LastDropofInk Mobile Site Launched

LastDropofInk Mobile Site Launched

LastDropofInk Mobile Site

Well, it’s about time I re-launched the mobile version, after all 10-20% of the traffic here during the weekdays can come from mobile devices.

Yesterday I altered one of the standard themes, wrote a customised mobile site and after testing on numerous devices, it’s been launched.

It’s been set up so that if you’re on a mobile decide (other than an iPad) that you’ll be redirected to the heavily cut down version which includes the basic functionality.

  • Home link
  • Search
  • Finger-friendly links
  • Image optimisation
  • A method to get back to the main site if desired

Being a speed freak, I’ve also ripped out (blocked) the really large overhead files as well, so that instead of the total page weight being around 183Kb, that it comes in at a tenth of this at 18Kb. You can test mobile sites here http://ready.mobi/results.jsp?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flastdropofink.co.uk&locale=en_EN

I’d like to also pass on an excellent tip I found to block the extra styles and JavaScript files in WordPress from here. My example is below and blocks the tubepress extension from loading css and js files in the header on the mobile site, by blocking them in the functions.php file.

add_action( ‘wp_print_styles’, ‘my_deregister_styles’, 100 );
function my_deregister_styles()
{
wp_deregister_style( ‘tubepress’ );
wp_deregister_script( ‘tubepress’ );
}

Using the Mobile Site?

Use the comments box below and let me how it feels!

13 replies
  1. Jason
    Jason says:

    Hey Matt, yes we use cloudflare, and it made a big diference for us, its free unless you need the use of SSL or some pro tools, which are $5 a month. not experienced any issues myself with the service, and used it as it was a simple 5 minute setup. The built in threat protection was a real bonus, with a few good customer service tools available for free.

    Reply
    • Matthew Ogborne
      Matthew Ogborne says:

      Howdy Jason,

      Yea I’ve looked at it 3 times, I just don’t feel comfortable with the DNS controls, plus CloudFront I feel is the better solution overall for the longer term.

      Will be fun when that time comes!

      Matt

      Reply
    • Matthew Ogborne
      Matthew Ogborne says:

      Howdy Whiskers,

      Thanks! I also got the main website loading times down to a few seconds too.

      Been driving my hosting provider nuts with really awkward requests for the past few days for support with lowering TTFB and identifying MySQL slow_queries.

      Matt

      Reply
      • Matthew Ogborne
        Matthew Ogborne says:

        Howdy Whiskers,

        Gotta show this off, the site was taking 7-8s to load on most pages depending upon the content.

        The oldest version I can find is here http://www.webpagetest.org/result/120129_A9_31MJ3/ and the page weight was 581Kb and 6.7s to load.

        After some tweaking, I’ve ended up with http://www.webpagetest.org/result/120210_79_36FYR/ which is 366Kb and 5s for today, but it will easily fall below 5s for some pages and I’m working on a way of minimising the use of the jQuery so I can get rid of it completely as its a 38Kb overhead and causes a loading lag of about 0.7 to 0.8s.

        Sweet eh?

        Matt

      • Matthew Ogborne
        Matthew Ogborne says:

        Howdy Jason,

        Ah I’m holding back on a true CDN for a while. I looked at CloudFare again last week, I can see the benefits, but I keep finding their main site to have issues and its put me off completely. Amazon’s CloudFront is the correct solution, but until I reach a certain marker in the sites daily traffic, I’m not paying for the CDN services until then.

        (When its hit I will move to a dedicated server just for this site alone and leverage a CDN.)

        If thats what you were suggesting?

        Matt

    • Matthew Ogborne
      Matthew Ogborne says:

      Howdy Sarah, I see “Hola” has rubbed off on you too :)

      I have an Android so I borrowed an iPhone to test with yesterday, it was rendering pretty quickly both via WiFi and mobile net.

      You at the IRX in March? Would be fab to meet for a cuppa?

      Matt

      Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] took that approach a while ago on this very site almost exactly one year ago when I launched a mobile version of this site, using a customised theme for smaller […]

  2. @day2dayebay says:

    LastDropofInk Mobile Site Launched:
    Well its about time I re-launched the mobile version, after … http://t.co/a8cwSTZi @lastdropofink

  3. RT @matthewogborne: Finished a mobile version of the LastDropOfInk site yesterday. Let me know what you think http://t.co/5YCN2Zfj

  4. LastDropofInk Mobile Site Launched: Well its about time I re-launched the mobile version, after all 10-20% o… http://t.co/86kfncmz #in

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