Tech Tuesday - Your mobile blog site is ugly

I wish a friend would have told me that my mobile blog site was ugly. But I suppose it takes seeing it for yourself to realize it. In fact, I did not realize that there was a mobile version of my blog. You see, I've always thought mobile sites were ugly and not user friendly. They are too plain and, at least on my smart phone, the mobile blog sites are so sensitive I often find myself flipping back and forth between posts rather than scrolling through the post I actually want to read. For these reasons I never set up a mobile site for my blog. I like color too much!

My truly ugly mobile blog.

I stumbled across my mobile blog site quite by accident this morning as I was reading a comment on my blog. Hideous! And I suppose I'm a bit technically slow because I did not realize that Blogger had forced a mobile blog template on me without me knowing. It is a great idea and I understand the need for blogs that don't take as much of my precious download quantity. Now it appears that Blogger users have more control over the look of their mobile sites. And trust me, I immediately began revising mine.

To update the mobile version of your blog, head to Blogger and click on the "Templates" tab on the left-hand sidebar. (Circled in red above.) You'll note that there are now two options: the blog itself and the Mobile blog. Click on the cog below the mobile version to change the settings.

You still have an option to only show the desktop blog on mobile devices, but choose carefully. If readers are like me, slow loading blogs don't get read.

Click on the "Choose mobile template" button on the left. Several options are listed and there are several template choices within each category. Scroll through the options using the left and right pointing arrows. Another option is "custom." Blogger will take the blog template you already have in place and format it to work on a mobile device. I suggest that you test this template on a mobile device to see how the formatting looks. Mine did not work very well in the mobile format, due to my custom header. Save your changes and test on a mobile device to ensure you like the look.

I'll admit that my mobile blog is still very ugly. I'm currently working on re-sizing by header to fit a mobile format. For adventurous types check out the following links for suggestions on custom mobile sites:

Bloggers Developers Network - Introducing custom mobile templates
Blogger Plugins - Edit Blogger Mobile Templates


From one friend to another, if you have yet to adjust your blog's mobile version it is ugly. There, I said it. Hurts less from a friend, doesn't it?