How to detect mobile browsers & Redirect mobile users to another URL

Mobile detection is not difficult to implement on WordPress, just grab any of these plugins and plug it in. Or you can try these mobile version creation tutorials. You get a mobile theme right away. Many of them are awesome too. In fact, I’ve tried more than one and quite honestly, they are really good. The only problem you encounter if at all, would be compatibility issues with other plugins such as the cache plugins. And also some plugins do not detect all the browser agents, can’t really say that’s a problem but, you know…

I’ve tried the mobile Wordpress themes as well and found that sometimes, things can get quite out of hand, like when I tried browsing from Opera, it gave me the mobile version, now that’s something you don’t want to happen with your visitors.

So, here’s an easy work around I found, with help from Lijeesh.

Instead of switching to a mobile theme, I thought why not do something simpler, and of course more reliable ?

The easiest way I found is to redirect mobile visitors to you Google blog reader feed. Amit has a “trick” here, where he explains how you can append the feed reader URL, and get a mobile version of your feeds. After this, using a mobile browser detection script, you can easily redirect the users to your “mobile page”. Here’s how. (Amit does not explain how to automatically redirect mobile users, but this one is a “install and forget” kind of a work around)

Step 1
Download the Mobile browser detection script from here.

Step 2
Upload the script to your theme folder
That would be yourdomain/wp-content/themes/yourthemefolder/

Step 3
Go to your Theme Editor, and then functions.php

Step 4
In functions.php, soon after the php opening tag, add this code –

require_once('mobile_device_detect.php');
mobile_device_detect(true,true,true,true,true,true,"http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/DailyDose4me");

Make sure you change the feed URL (in my case – http://feeds.feedburner.com/DailyDose4me) to match your blogs. That is after the feed/ portion.

That’s it, now close and check via a mobile phone.

Advantages

I realize that there are lot of work arounds available to achieve the same but I found this amazingly simple. Or may be its because I like the idea of redirecting mobile users to the Google reader version effective, because while you do it, you’re actually making it really simple.

- Users can easily subscribe via Google reader
- Your AdSense ads are not missed out (some mobile themes skip it)
- Everything you put into your RSS feeds, show up on the mobile version as well
- No theme glitches, downtimes or screw ups (Unless Google scres up, which is very unlikely)

Do let me know your thoughts, if it worked or not with you.

Possibly related SEO & Social Media Articles

• 10 Easy Tutorials to create a Mobile version of your blog in minutes !
    If you haven’t switched to a mobile version of your blog/site, then you are really missing something. Today a good amount of people search for information on mobiles/mobile search and its not far away when all websites “will have to” go mobile if they want to catch up. As in all cases, the early [...]...
• A Magazine like wordpress theme (similar to ProBlogger) from Arun Kale
  Arun Kale is the editor at the Split-magazine. Well, he probably knows best what are the features in a magazine that can be incorporated to a wordpress theme. And he did just that by coding an ultra cool wordpress theme – The Morning After. The Morning after, is a magazine like wordpress theme that is sleek, [...]...
• PicSquare launches photo blogs for users
  PicSquare, which provides “photo based gifts” services in India, has come up with a new feature for their users. A photo blog, where users can upload and store pictures like albums or blogs – a photo blog as they would call it. Manish says – To continue our effort to provide best value in online photography [...]...
• Make your blog mobile friendly with cool plugins
  Well, if you are on wordpress things are easy. Number of users accessing internet through their mobile phones are increasing these days and all major portals and search engines have already converted their blogs to mobile friendly versions. Bloggers today stand at a point where there are lot of archives and it’s going to be [...]...
• Create a SEO mobile version of your wordpress blog
  One of the white hat SEO methods Matt Cutts suggested to bloggers during the WordCamp 2007 is to create a mobile version of your blog. He thinks this is important because, in the future, mobiles will be used to search for more content than now. So make sure you equip yourself for the big [...]...