Mobile Usability Problems - According to Google Webmaster Tools It says for every page: Touch elements too close - Make sure your links and buttons are far enough apart. Does that mean the navigation at the bottom of each page? For example: http://www.everest1953.co.uk/TheHillaryStep.php It says for every page: Content not sized to viewport - Make sure your pages don't require horizontal scrolling to view completely. Would putting this <meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> in the 'header' fix this problem? Thank you.
Nope. That site is not properly coded, and adding that will do next-to-nothing. You'll have to do some work on the CSS at minimum (I didn't actually look at the HTML code), to add @media-queries, and style things accordingly. It's a very simple site, layoutwise, so it shouldn't be that hard to accomplish, but it depends a bit on what you've done in the HTML as well. If the HTML is sound, a few lines of CSS will usually suffice to fix the problems. The site as isn't properly responsive, as resizing the site down to "mobile size" in a browser breaks most of the page.
Thank you for your reply. I was suprised when you said 'The site as isn't properly responsive' because as far as I understand I am using a responsive template with RVSitebuilder.
Sleaze scam artist nube predation nonsense like "RVSiteBuilder" simply deludes you into THINKING you can build a website; their even daring to use the term "responsive" is utter and complete nonsense given the outright disasters they vomit up and have the unmitigated gall to call a website. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's really the truth of the matter. IF you knew ANYTHING about HTML, CSS, JavaScript or accessibility, you would recognize the LAUNDRY LIST of how not to build a website it has saddled you with, from the abuse of a form element for inaccessible scripttard navigation, to the use of tables for layout and tags like <font> and attributes like "align" and "target" that have no business on any website written after 1997, paragraphs around non-paragraph elements, nothing remotely resembling a logical document structure... even something as simple as the keywords <meta> is utterly and completely banjaxed! There's a reason site builders are cute for personal pages for grandma, but once you are at the point of it being a "real website" ALL "visual designer" tools are utter and complete rubbish that results in garbage useless inaccessible broken sites. Even tools you'll here supposed experts support like Dreamweaver typically vomit up garbage HTML, little if any separation of presentation from content, and nothing even remotely resembling accessible design. Same goes for "off the shelf" templates or designs -- having a design before you even have semantic markup of the content is putting the cart before the horse, an utterly and completely back-assward approach to building websites. Hence why the PSD jockeys who call themselves "designers" typically don't know enough about HTML, CSS or accessibility to be designing but two things; and Jack left town. So this is DEFINITELY a situation where I'd advise pitching that entire mess in the trash, and either learning how to use HTML and CSS properly, or hiring someone who does to do it for you. Anything else will miss all the accessibility stepping stones that you need in place to target anything more than desktop screens. ... and remember, well written sites don't just think "mobile" and "desktop" -- they think "device neutrality"; shouldn't matter WHAT it's being accessed through, it should still deliver the content in an accessible manner. Everything from braille readers up to 4k displays.
When you look at that kind of crap; it sort of reminds you of geocities. The quality level is pretty much the same. However Geocities was actaully better because the limited storage/bandwidth reduced the amount of bloat it was possible to load on the garbage trucks they called web sites.
That's the kicker of things like Wix or when Wordpress hosts for you I dont' get -- even if you didnt' fix the accessibility issues, the things I'm usually pointing out would save them money on hosting costs. If nothing else, you'd think their purse strings would be telling them what they make is bloated trash. You'd think the almighty dotted line would come knocking sooner than later. Though honestly even the largest of these companies are run by people who don't seem to have a firm grasp of business practices, much less good practices for HTML and CSS. Rather than pay a good coder once or take the time to have their people learn how to do things properly, they just sleaze it out the door and keep throwing more hardware at it as if that's going to magically make it all better. When I was doing this full time that was always something I used to convince clients that my proposals while not as fancy was the better choice - I talked to their wallet in the long term, instead of just trying to make a fast buck to Billy Joe and Bobby Sue to the exit as fast as possible -- or worse build up a unsustainable level of required handholding and support. It's like how poor people are more likely to waste money on non-essentials at Rent-a-center instead of just saving up for three months and doing without. "OH I need a bed" -- take that $50 you'd give rent-a-center and get a cheap air mattress, set aside what you'd be handing them weekly, and in two or three months buy something nice. But as I keep saying, it's hard to overcome the "credit for EVERYTHING" mentality. As Kissenger once joked, "America has gone from a nation of savers to a nation of debters!" Not so much of a joke anymore -- and that mentality is spreading to every level of society; worse actively promoted and defended as a practice by that "2% a the top" as how else can they keep taking money away from people who don't have money.
I think the big problem with WP is they want the free ride they get from everyone promoting a theme ir plugin for WP, and to do that they need swiss cheese slopware full of pile instead of controlled access using hooks. They make it easy for anyone to layer a bit more trash on top of the "not quite a real CMS" layered on top of a mediocre blog architecture. The net result is a sewer with open access for the addon vendors; and for the hackers. Of course in some cases the the addon vendors ARE hackers who dupe novice web entrepreneurs into hosting trojans that ultimately infect their visitors. If they fixed WP so that it generated valid code(would require re-architecting the generators and DB) and prevented non-compliant plugins from being used(not a major coding effort) they would be left with a core CMS and only a handful of vendors capable of producing at the necessary quality level). That would ultimately lead to the "quick and easy" morons moving to platforms with "cool" stuff like three years old looking for shiny stuff and new toys. They are a pimp for all the themeforest whores; a facilitator for hackers; and support any garbage on offer as long as they say "for Wordpress" in the promotional material.