Hello everyone! Happy New 2015! Wishing everyone great health and much success in 2015! Have a question, which I hope can be answered by you, gurus! I have a friend who has a website that was built in 2008. It's been ranked #1 for the keywords in their area; however, since mobile devices are dominating the market, my friend is hoping that he can add mobile code to his CSS stylesheet without touching the HTML code of the actual website, and make the site responsive. Basically, I would like to help him, and now I have a task where I have to somehow convert his non-mobile website to a mobile one by changing only one CSS stylesheet. Is this doable, or it's more like a fairy tale? Thank you very much in advance for your help!
Hi, Doable? It seems so. Harder? Yes Not to mention when there is one / two issues viewing the desktop-version on mobiles. Aside from styling / layout, does everything seem to work well? Hendra
I don't think it's worth it. You'd be better off using a CSS Framework like bootstrap and re-creating the site as best as you can, including the HTML.
Thank you! All he wants is to make a couple of pages mobile friendly, hiding some less important content. Aside from styling, everything works well. This site is viewable on mobile ok, iPhone resizes the columns so they look ok. The issue is that google doesn't assign "mobile" status to it since it doesn't have a mobile friendly code, so when you google this site on mobile, it's no longer ranked #1, as google pushes mobile sites to show first on mobile devices. P.S. Works fine on Android devices. Only issue is ...iPhone.
If it's only a few changes he wants done, then you should be able to (short-term) fix the problems with media queries. It might take a while though and be very tedious!
Thank you! I appreciate the help! Gives me the direction to follow. Looking at this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Media_queries
As a temporary workaround, you can create a mobile version of the site using some free mobile site builders like mobify, onbile, mippin, etc.. Though on a long term basis, it is advisable to recreate the website using a CMS and create permanent 301 redirects to the old links so that ranking is retained.
It's very hard to dial in a proper answer without actually seeing the site in question, but there are a lot of telltales that will say how hard/easy such a conversion would be. My own sites switching them to responsive was a bit of a no-brainer, but that's based on the fact I actually was paying attention to good coding practices and accessibility norms at the time. IF the site was built with semantic markup... IF the site was built with progressive enhancement so it gracefully degrades... IF the site was built with separation of presentation from content.. IF the site was built with a semi-fluid elastic layout with dynamic fonts... IF the site was built without a bunch of "gee ain't it neat" scripttardery that relies on fixed widths to even function... then sure, it's easy peasy pudding pie... But IF the site was built with outdated coding methodology, presentation in the markup, px fonts with px widths, with zero concern for graceful degradation and is loaded down with artsy-fartsy "designer" bull by someone with their head permanantly wedged up 1997's ass (aka the people who today seem to be fully embracing HTML 5), then you have an uphill battle in front of you and would be better served by throwing the entire mess in the trash and starting over from scratch... MORE SO if the site was built with some idiotic mouth-breathing "framework", WYSIWYG, preprocessor, or doesn't fix all the dumbass code systems like Turdpress vomits up and has the giant pair of monkey-brass to call markup. Basically the more sleazy "shortcuts" (that actually make MORE work) that were used, the more boned you are. ... oh, and anyone who says "Use bootstrap" you can automatically assume has NO *****ING CLUE what they are talking about and needs a quadruple helping of Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform. Bootcrap -- go find a stick to scrape that off with.