Over the last year I’ve been using my mobile phone more and more while on the road to access websites and other services. Some sites offer either a mobile version of their site or an app that allows me, as an end user, to access the information and functions that I need.
I’d love to be able to offer “sane” mobile versions of all the sites I manage, but I can’t see it happening any time soon (As an aside, a mobile app for Blacknight is on the ever growing todo list)
Several of the sites I run / manage are powered by Vbulletin and there are a couple of ways of enabling them for smartphone users (iPhone / Android etc).
ForumRunner – this is a plugin for Vbulletin which includes the option to use either Adsense for mobile or Admob ads to monetise your site. You can also control which usergroups see adverts and which sections of the site are available to ForumRunner users.
TapaTalk – while this integrates with Vbulletin it is not a “traditional” plugin, so you don’t get any extra option in your Vbulletin control panel. Enabling it involves uploading some files and adding a line of Javascript to your template.
In both instances setting up a site to use the software is 100% free and both systems give you usage data, which is quite interesting.
ForumRunner for the iPhone comes in two versions, with the free one being a bit limited.
Tapatalk is available as a paid app only.
Both applications have builtin directories that you can list your sites on and thus allow users to find your site by keyword or topic.
There is also an app called TouchBB, but it doesn’t seem to be as fully featured.
The creators of Vbulletin have released an app for the iPhone which currently allows people to access the main Vbulletin site forum. They will be releasing an app that forum owners will be able to brand, but the announced pricing is very high compared to the options mentioned above.
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