SF-Fandom Forums Now Mobile-friendly

Google announced a couple of weeks ago that effective April 21 any Web PAGE that does not meet its mobile-friendly requirements will be demoted in their search results.  Although the SF-Fandom blogs are mobile-friendly we are using Vbulletin 4.1.5 for our forum software.  We have not yet decided to upgrade to Vbulletin 5.x because of the expense.

Still, we recently realized there was a mobile-friendly style already available in the /install/ directory of Vbulletin 4.1.5 (it has been there since 4.1.2).  If you run VBulletin on your Website you should only keep the /install/ directory offline for emergency maintenance.  Do not keep it on your live site because it has been compromised by hackers.

To install the style is pretty simple.  Upload it to your forum root directory and then in the AdminCP control panel go to Styles and IMPORT the style (giving it a name like “Mobile Style”).  After that you go to your OPTIONS dashboard and make this the default style for mobile users.

The mobile-friendly style may not look pretty but it is far easier to read than the regular style, which you have to use “pinch-and-zoom” to read.  We apologize for waiting so long to activate this style.  It’s just an oversight.

Mobile-friendly presentation has become very important to Website management this year.  If you are not sure of what that means, but you use the Chrome browser, you can toggle between mobile- and desktop views using CTRL+SHIFT+I in your browser.

If we find time later this year we may tweak the mobile style or install another one.

Meanwhile, if you cannot convert your site to be mobile-friendly by April 21 do not panic. Google says that once they see your pages are mobile-friendly they will stop demoting them.