Forum Display Enhancements - Mobile Phone / iPhone / PDA Detection and Style Assignment

This add-on will detect most mobile phones, iPhones, PDAs and other mobile browsing devices and automatically for the user to a specific vBulletin style.

What can it do?
Detects most mobile phones and force the user to a specific style (users will not be able to select other styles from a mobile device with this add-on installed). If you have multiple styles installed which are optimized for small screen mobile devices, iPhones, WIndows Mobile devices you can assign a specific style to each of these groups.

Whilst designed with mobile device users in mind, you could also assign styles to self defined browsers. For example you can assign an alternative style to Internet Explorer users whilst Firefox users get the default style. You could also assign an alternative style to Google or Yahoo spiders.

Instructions:
0. Install styles which you wish to assign to Mobile/PDA/iPhone users - some links will appear at the bottom of this post
1. Download the product file
2. Install via Product Manager
3. Configure options via vBulletin Options, Mobile Device Detection (should appear at end)
4. Start browsing from your mobile device!
5. Click "Mark as Installed"

If upgrading from a previous 3.5 or 3.6 version, you will need to uninstall that and the install this one.

To uninstall simply uninstall the product - there are no database changes or additional files.

Styles released on vBulletin which you can use:
Dartho's Mobile, Cell, Phone, PDA, iPhone Style for vBulletin 3.7 (<-- yep, that's mine)
ElForro's iPhone / iPod Touch Optimized Style
Zachery's vB Lite Style
vBMechanics Mobile Alabama Style

Due to the stripped down nature of these mobile styles, you will find that most for 3.5 and 3.6 will work quite happily on 3.5, 3.6 & 3.7 although additional features introduced in vBulletin in recent years such as Social Groups, Blogs and Photo Galleries will not show well on a small screen. All should display your actual forums well.

3.6 Version can be found here

Marked as Beta until I get some feedback, and 3.7 goes Gold

Release Information
1.0.0 Initial release for 3.7 ported over from 3.6.8 version

[ceech]

thanks for this. just installed.

[RedTrinity]

Great add-on, installed and testing at the moment!

One of my users (who is using her phone internet to test the site) has reported that it all works well with accessing/login etc, but when she tries to submit a post, she gets logged out.

Strangely enough, the post was still made, but it was blank apart from the "Posted via mobile device" auto message.

Any ideas? Appreciate your help

[zane99]

ah ok i fix one problem now onto another lol:



When users try to post it says security token missing or something........


Help?

[dartho]

GamerGirl - That would be related to the style, not this addon. I see you're using the one I wrote and the add-on that goes with it. Are you using the latest version? I also see it's been modified slightly. Do you still get errors if you revert all templates to their original state (make a backup forst so you can re-implment your changes)

Zane - that's related to the style which isn't my one, however if you do a search in that style for:

<input type="hidden" name="s" value="$session[sessionhash]" />

and add this underneath:

<input type="hidden" name="securitytoken" value="$bbuserinfo[securitytoken]" />

that should fix it

[gamerfu]

Originally Posted by dartho

PSPs should be detected - what is the user agent string of the device?

I will ask my user what browser and PSP version they are using.

[biome.pat]

Just noting that Google Chrome pretends to be safari, so if you have an exception for a safari style, google chrome will use it too.

[omanmoon.net]

mmmmm
now it's not work after upgrade to 3.7.4 PL1

after sign in the page change to white color only !!

before logged in the forum showing no problem ! @_@

[TheWhite]

Originally Posted by dartho

1) That is correct - it is by design. If you wish to allow users to change between styles, then you don't need this add-on

2) Assuming you ar eusing the mobile style I made, you can 'enable' smiles and images by removing the 'replacement variables' defined in the style

What do i have to do to add just the smiles in the posts and replying?

[grecostimpy]

Originally Posted by dartho

I think it may be easier to go about this in the opposite manner.

This is untested!

Create a sub-domain like "pc.exampleforum.com" and park it on the same web space as your main forum

Create a new plugin called "Force to Default Style" on "fetch_style" hook execution order 10 with the following code:

$pc_url= "pc.exampleforum.com";
if(preg_match('/'.$pc_url.'/i', $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], $match))
    {
      $styleid=x;
    }

change the x on th line $styleid=x; to be the styleid number of your default style.

Tell your mobile users that if they wish to view the default style, they should visit pc.exampleforum.com or add a link in your mobile style navbar to this subdomain called "Default STyle" or some such thing.

This way mobile visitors to your site are still detected and given a mobile skin, but they can choose to view the site using the default style.

If you make your mobile styles not user selectable, they will not be able to view you site form their PC's via the mobile style (they could with User Agent spoofing - but there's not much you can do about that)

Hope this helps.

nb - this will only work correctly if all your links are relative - hard code full path links and addons such as VBSEO may break this.

To get around the detection (since some users like the full version on their phone and some like the mobile version) and accomplish a much less intricate way of what you propose above, can I just create a subdomain mobile.mydomain.com that redirects to the styleid of the mobile style on the main domain?

If you want the mobile style, you visit mobile.mydomain.com (and get redirected to the styleid of the mobile style) ...if you want the full version you visit mydomain.com. Would there be any effects from doing this? Would it work correctly? My guess would be that they may get cookied and stuck in the mobile style....

OR....could a second instance of VB be created on the subdomain (pointing to the same database) and somehow just use the mobile style? (I believe you already have a hack for this)

Thanks! EXCELLENT mods dartho, my users are raving.

[grecostimpy]

Originally Posted by grecostimpy

To get around the detection (since some users like the full version on their phone and some like the mobile version) and accomplish a much less intricate way of what you propose above, can I just create a subdomain mobile.mydomain.com that redirects to the styleid of the mobile style on the main domain?

If you want the mobile style, you visit mobile.mydomain.com (and get redirected to the styleid of the mobile style) ...if you want the full version you visit mydomain.com. Would there be any effects from doing this? Would it work correctly? My guess would be that they may get cookied and stuck in the mobile style....

OR....could a second instance of VB be created on the subdomain (pointing to the same database) and somehow just use the mobile style? (I believe you already have a hack for this)

Thanks! EXCELLENT mods dartho, my users are raving.

Nevermind my last post above....I parked a subdomain on top of my main domain and used your Diff Domains / Diff Styles mod. Works perfectly! Thanks!