Forum Style - Lightweight Style for Small Screen Devices (cell phone, iphone, mobile, android)

A lightweight *forum only style aimed at small screen devices such as Windows Smartphones, Nokias and even iPhones. It has VERY low bandwidth requirements - 15 times less on my site - 20K as opposed to 300K for forumhome.

*forum only - I have done a very small amount of rough work on CMS templates, a simple single column CMS *could* be created to work with this style without too much effort. However I am not sure if you can have a different CMS layout dependent on which style you are using?

This is an update to the mobile style I have previously released.

The changes are predominantly aesthetic to take advantage of larger screens.

It is also much easier to change colour schemes by editing the commented CSS file.

Demo: http://vbdev.org/forum.php?styleid=7

This is a a lightweight style and as such has much reduced functionality/information over the default vBulletin style.

Install instructions:

• Firstly, if upgrading, I recommend installing this as a new style rather than overwriting your previous install. This way you get to test it first without trashing your existing style.
• BACKUP YOUR EXISTING lightweight.css.php FILE IF YOU HAVE CSS CUSTOMISATIONS
• Download ZIP file
• Unzip to a local/temp directory
• Edit lightweight.css.php file to customise colours if required
• Upload contents of the upload directory in the zip file folder to your forum root.
• Install style XML via Style Manager in your ADMINCP
• **Install and configure "LightWeight Style Options"
• See post 2 for a FAQ
• Click "Mark as Installed"
• Test it out
• Leave a rating
• Leave feedback
• Enjoy checking your site from your mobile phone without the need to pinch/zoom/wait etc...

Version Control:

1.0.0 - 25 AUG 2010 - Initial Release on vBulletin.org
1.0.1 - 26 AUG 2010 - Fixed "Mark All Forums Read" link in Search results. Released Lightweight Style Options to customise this
1.0.2 - 21 MAR 2011 - Updated to 4.1.2, removed short tags from CSS, fixed some issues discovered since last release, added some stuff.
1.0.3 - 16 DEC 2011 - Updated to 1.0.3, tried to fix all known issues. Nothing new. If you have updated your site as bugs have been found, probably no need to upgrade. But if you're upgrading your site from to 4.1.9, might be worthwhile.
1.0.3a - 16 DEC 2011 - remove test ad hook code accidently left in postbit_legacy template

Branding Free:

The style is free to use. However I ask that you keep links in the footer. If you want to remove them - send me a donation of an amount you can afford, or that you think is fair/reasonable, it's up to you how much.

[Alan_SP]

Just two posts before yours is answer: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=888

Install this mod and you'll be able to set this style as default for mobile devices. Just turn off vB's default system for setting default mobile style for mobile devices.

[djbaxter]

But I don't want to disallow users from using the vBulletin mobile version. I just want to add the option for mobile users to select this one.

I have the Suite. Now the CMS doesn't get a lot of use and blogs are currently disabled so the forum is the main focus, but this style, unlike the vBulletin mobile style, doesn't provide for anything but the forum.

Suggestions?

[dartho]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I have the vB Mobile Style as default in 4.1.12 PL1.

However, at least one member is expressing an option to use this mobile style instead.

Two questions:

1. If I add this as a mobile style it shows a number of uncached templates. How can I fix this? (If I add it as a new full style, the templates are cached but that seems like it would be confusing to users.)

2. There seems to be no way to make this the default mobile style now that the vB Mobile Style is installed, and in either this mobile style or the vB Default Mobile Style, there seems to be no way to choose an alternate mobile style - just mobile or full forum default style. How can I add this as an option?

1. Uncached templates are from vBulletin removing templates that are in teh non-mobile default (or more correctly MASTER) style. It would seem they then proc3eed to hide these templates form the style manager I think the way to reolve this would be to deleted those templates from the XML file before installing it.

2. On my test site I can happily select both this style and vBulletins Mobile style as default style for both old and/or modern mobile browsers?

In order to have links to other mobile styles, you will need to make edits to templates (probably footer) and add in links there. It would appear that vBulletin have removed the style chooser code from the mobile styles? A plugin would have to be written to create this or you may be able to manually add the code to your style.

A plugin could also be conceivably written to detect visitors viewing your CMS from this style and flick them over to vBulletins style?

[Alan_SP]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I have the Suite. Now the CMS doesn't get a lot of use and blogs are currently disabled so the forum is the main focus, but this style, unlike the vBulletin mobile style, doesn't provide for anything but the forum.

Actually it does. You can look at CMS, Blog, I even look at VaultWiki articles with this style. It is not optimized, but it is usable. Test it yourself. Add direct links in navbar manually as I did and you'll see that it works.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Alan_SP

Actually it does. You can look at CMS, Blog, I even look at VaultWiki articles with this style. It is not optimized, but it is usable. Test it yourself. Add direct links in navbar manually as I did and you'll see that it works.

Thank you. I'll look into this further...

However, even with the Options add-on installed, my iPhone will not select this style as default unless I fully delete the vBulletin Default Mobile Style. Setting the vBulletin Stytle options to "None" for Mobile does not work.

Does that correspond with your experience?

[djbaxter]

Also are you saying to use VB4 - Mobile Phone / iPhone / PDA Detection and Style Assignment instead of Lightweight Style Options for "Lightweight Style"?

Dartho seems to have several versions of everything which is confusing...

[dartho]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Also are you saying to use VB4 - Mobile Phone / iPhone / PDA Detection and Style Assignment instead of Lightweight Style Options for "Lightweight Style"?

Dartho seems to have several versions of everything which is confusing...

Nope - only one version of each thing. The 2 you list are 2 different products. One is mobile detection script (vBulletin now has one of it's own) and the other is an extension to this style which adds optional customisations (which you would otherwise have to manually edit templates or add plugins to create).

[Alan_SP]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Also are you saying to use VB4 - Mobile Phone / iPhone / PDA Detection and Style Assignment instead of Lightweight Style Options for "Lightweight Style"?

I use both.

With first I selected which style is default for mobile devices and my users reported that this style gets selected, but I disabled vB own options. I'm on vB4.1.12PL1.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Alan_SP

I use both.

With first I selected which style is default for mobile devices and my users reported that this style gets selected, but I disabled vB own options. I'm on vB4.1.12PL1.

When you say "disabled" do you mean uninstall? or how exactly did you disable the vB options? I am also on 4.1.12 PL1.

[edytwinky]

Does this mod allow for users to vote in polls?