Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Mobile Web Directories

With today's mobile technology, it is a good idea to provide a version of your website that can be easily viewed on a mobile phone. I have begun the process of creating a mobile version that uses the same database as the normal one. An example can be found at http://careerseeker.biz. Viewing this site via a desktop computer will give a different result than from a mobile phone.

I use a script on the static site that detects the type of browser, so it can send the user to the mobile site, if necessary. All functions are visible on both versions, including the display of a Google map for Premium listings. Both sites allow link submissions for both a normal and a Premium listing, and both have a PayPal integration for the Premium listing fee.

The script that I use is the latest version of PowerSeek version 6. In my estimation, it still is the best script available to operate a Directory. I have found that the mobile version has to run as a 'Dynamic' site and as a 'Medium-sized' directory to make everything work properly.

I run the mobile version as a Dynamic site so the database doesn't have to be built into static HTML pages every day. They automatically display any new changes made on either version. I just included a 'noindex,nofollow' tag so the pages aren't duplicated by Google.

I run the mobile version as a Medium-sized directory to allow users to submit to the directory. I found that running it as a Large-sized directory will not allow submissions because the script looks for a particular category to submit to, and the dynamic version does not provide that information.

Please give me feedback. I am always looking for ways to improve the quality, and any suggestions would be appreciated.