Question:
As mobile news consumption grows, how are news sites gearing up with a consistent user experience across technology devices?
News organizations are striving to find new ways to attract readers. The bar is high for savvy consumers, who don’t differentiate between the big brands and their preferred news sources. How are news innovators optimizing content for a great online and mobile experience?
Answers: Remember to refresh often to see latest comments!
5 answers so far.
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Jeff Lennan says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:01 am
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Gregory Noack says:
October 23, 2011 at 6:59 pm
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Jeff Lennan says:
October 24, 2011 at 12:05 pm
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Will Sullivan says:
May 9, 2011 at 7:46 pm
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lisa skube says:
May 10, 2011 at 1:22 pm
| ParticipantsDoes anyone have experience with the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin? From the plugin directory page: “It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.” http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/
I have not used the wordpress-mobile-pack plugin. I currently use wptouch and wptouch pro. Both are very useful for WordPress mobile integration. The free wptouch plugin has great features for people with little knowledge of WordPress development, making mobile site creation easy. The pro version has a couple more options for developers/designers wanting more accessibility.
For a pro designer the roots-theme created by Ben Word is a great option for creating a site and a mobile version within the same theme.
“Roots is a starting WordPress theme made for developers that’s based on HTML5 Boilerplate, Blueprint CSS (or 960.gs) and Starkers that will help you rapidly create brochure sites and blogs.” – http://www.rootstheme.com/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/
http://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch-pro/
Thanks Gregory. I am checking out wptouch now and good to know re the Roots WP theme being off-the-shelf for mobile.
I think the bigger question is can news organizations balance their legacy users and staff (and their ui expectations) with what best suits the mobile experience. Most mobile experiences are RSS dumps or digitized print pixels.
Hey Will; thanks for weighing in. Do you have any examples of newsrooms (or other use cases) where you see folks doing this well? Are there steps to get folks from the RSS dump to incrementally improve the experience for users? As one or two person news publishing sites barely have time for lunch, how can those with limited resources work toward better content experiences for audiences accessing information via their mobile devices?