Coming from the Python/Django universe, I discovered Node.JS, Express + EJS and I have a big crush on those techs (mostly for the deployment part).
To practice and keep the pleasure to discover them, I'd like to make a blog-like project. It will be mostly static content with big articles for SEO and some dynamic functions, each article page must have a "true" slug like www.site.com/my-article.
I just found a documentation on how to do SSR with Express+EJS : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/node-js-server-side-rendering-ssr-using-ejs/
I'd like to know if some of you have some feedbacks on that type of implementation for live projects. Is it indexed well by Google ? Did you see some SEO issues ?
Many thanks :)
Googlebot can crawl, process and render JavaScript based websites, whether client side or server side rendered. Googlebot crawls the web using a headless evergreen Chrome. It's still best to render server side for performance depending on your specific site needs.
EJS is SEO friendly. You can customise all core SEO elements of your page/app so the GoogleBot can crawl it. In the end it all depends on how good your technical/onsite SEO is. I haven't got a problem with GoogleBot crawling my site. You must be careful to include correct technical SEO on your site at the beginning of development so you won't have problems later when site will be visible to public.
If you aren't sure about quality of your technical SEO you can use Google Lighthouse in DevTools (F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I) to check for the problems. Lighthouse will give you a better prospective of how GoogleBot crawls your page.
You need to check only SEO category. Device is optional. Then you click on "Generate report" and wait for the results.
The Dream would be:
More on how to use Lighthouse https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse#devtools
Making a EXISTING CMS site compatible for mobile site NOT REDIRECT
Hi All.
I am currently creating a mobile version of an expression engine site that we use.
I am having problems with this, because typically I can just use media quires, or use redirect scripts.
However, the layout of the mobile site will be completely different from the desktop, so I can't just fiddle with a media quires for the CSS (as site just looks to different).
I was thinking of using a javascript to wipe the code or markup (php) if the device is mobile BUT it would mean perhaps loading two versions of code anytime a page loads up (not good for mobile). Eg one code for desktop and another for mobile.
I can't change the file names eg (mobile_index) because it is a CMS and the links wont link up correctly. I have tried this a few times , and also editing the .HTACCESS file, but it simply didnt work.
So if anyone knows how do I change the code of a page if the device mobile, but cant change file name, directory or any of that :-)
Cheers
Daragh
Why no redirect? If I was in your position, which I was a few months ago, I would handle this totally different:
Install Multiple Site Manager by ExpressionEngine: http://expressionengine.com/user_guide/cp/sites/index.html
Add another site -- mobile
Give it a proper domainname like m.domain.com
Give it its own template group
... and redirect with http://github.com/sebarmeli/JS-Redirection-Mobile-Site/
Now you can manage both installations from the same CMS and both installations can access existing channels, modules, extensions and members. This will keep your code fast and clean.
Adding a bunch of conditionals will only slow down installation.
Actually you could mess with media queries - it's the most flexible. JS is really overkill for something like this. At larger sizes, UL>LI menus could appear, and at smaller sizes they could be hidden (display:none) and swapped to select lists; divs can be replaced, elements dropped or resized. I also combine them with different snippets or embeds so you can tailor the content out as well.
You might try something like MX Mobile Device Detect. It gives you some variables that can detect if the user is on a mobile device that you could use in conditionals in your templates.
I'm working on a project for class. To create a website and a website for mobile users. The site is to recongize the type of device/browser accessing the page and send the appropiate form. So if I was to visit the site on IE8 it will direct me to the mainpage for IE8, if I was to access the site with a mobile device it will direct me to the mobile website main page automatically.
Also, I need to design the website for at least two different screen sizes.
I'm coding in HTML5, I do not know the type of server the site will be hosted on. The use of Javascript is extra credited. The project details are to "design a small mobile web site. The web site should be tested on one or more mobile devices. The iPod Touch device will be used as the base for testing."
I know how to do 8/10 of the requirements (except the two mentioned). I looked at W3C and didn't find anything.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Do a Google for:
CSS Browser Detection
JavaScript Browser Detection
Also you should think twice about creating multiple sites - with basically the same content - or creating proper stylesheets that are referred from the same site.
Hope that get's you the other 2 requirements
NOTE: Since this is homework I won't post any links...
I suspect that ServerFault isn't the best place for this question...but aside from that, your question is a little vague. A google search for "designing a mobile website" turns up what looks to be several pages of relevant information. If you first try working with the information in those documents and then come back with specific questions (e.g., "I tried this and it behaved this way instead of the way I expected") you're apt to get better answers.
I am looking for something that will help me learn how to set up my site so that when people go to it there is the regular version and the mobile version. Problem I am having is that most of the sites I see on google are pay sites that help you set that up. Can I just make two versions of my site and load them both on my hosting? Also how does it know when to load the mobile versus the regular? These are the types of things I am looking to learn, any suggestions of places to start?
Please please please make sure you do the following:
Only do a mobile version if it adds value.
If a user requests a deep link from a mobile device, don't redirect to the mobile home page
Allow the user to choose to view the full version
Make sure tablets such as the iPad uses the full version by default
Don't serve WML to the hi-res smartphones such as the iPhone
If your full sized website is unusable on a phone, consider tweaking it to be more suitable (don't print content text too wide).
Modern iPhones and iPads are perfectly capable of handling most full sized websites, there is little need for a mobile version unless it actually improves the user experience. I hate to get redirected to a baby interface that doesn't provide the information I need.
Good examples of mobile versions include:
Google website
Gmail website
Mediocre examples include:
Any blogpress site
Bad examples include
anything that uses WML
Here's Apple's advice on providing mobile versions to the iPad:
Note that the Safari on iPad user
agent string contains the word
"Mobile", but does not contain the
word "iPhone". If you are currently
serving mobile content to any browser
that self-identifies as "Mobile", you
should modify your user agent string
checks to look for iPad and avoid
sending it the wrong version of your
site. The version numbers in this
string are subject to change over time
as new versions of Safari on iPad
become available, so any code that
checks the user agent string should
not rely on version numbers.
Something to look into would be the #mobile css media type, which is used to load a different styles when loading in a mobile device. I am not sure which devices support it, but I imagine it would be most of the popular models. As far as your suggestion, you can certainly host two separate sites, but I would defiantly go through Alex's suggestions before you go through the trouble.
http://www.w3.org/TR/css-mobile/
Alex had some good suggestions, but if you really want to serve up a specific version based on mobile or non-mobile you can take a look at the http header. In some cases the User Agent will give it away, but not always. Check out this link for details: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/
How can i start the development of a site that can be browse from mobile phones? For example, if you browse Gmail site from an iPhone the site looks different from the normal site. You have to design two differents sites to do this? How can I know if the site is accessed by a mobile browser?
You don't HAVE to design two different sites, but you probably want to if it's important to let mobile users access your site.
There are a few ways to deal with this problem, each with pros and cons. I'm assuming that your site has its information in a database, and publishes that data using a set of templates? (Like a Ruby on Rails or Django site; a PHP site; a blog; etc.) If you've hand-coded a bunch of static HTML pages, this is going to be way more labor intensive for you.
1: Same HTML, different stylesheets for SCREEN and MOBILE
The idea: You deliver the same HTML structure to all requests. You create a stylesheet for SCREEN and one for MOBILE.
Good: For you, the programmer. It's easier for you to maintain 2 stylesheets than it is to maintain 2 totally separate template sites.
Bad: For your users. A site that's easy to use on a mobile device usually is inefficient for a normal browser; and sites optimized for a desktop / laptop often fail miserably on a mobile device. Obviously it depends on how you code your pages, but in most cases, pushing your normal site to a mobile browser will be bad for your users. (See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html for a summary of Jakob Nielsen's recent usability research on mobile sites.)
2: Maintain separate sites
(Gmail maintains even more than 2 systems! They basically have different container applications / templates that process the same data: the full AJAX browser version; the plain HTML browser version; a basic mobile version; a native Blackberry application; and a native iPhone application.)
This is the emerging standard for sites that really care about having both a mobile and desktop presence. It's more work for you, but in general it's much better for your users.
On the upside, you can probably create one stripped down pure HTML site that works for mobile and that acts as a fallback for the rare web user who doesn't have javascript, or who has major accessibility issues that prevent them from using the "full" site.
Also, depending on your user base: in the US, people generally have access to a desktop / laptop, and use their mobile devices for auxiliary access. For example, I book my plane tickets and rental car using my desktop computer, but I want to look up my reservation code on my mobile. In many cases, you can get away with limiting the functionality that you offer on the mobile site, and require the full computer to perform uncommon use cases.
The basic procedure:
Design & build UIs for mobile and screen.
Launch the sites at two different URLs; the emerging convention is www.yoursite.com for the desktop version, and m.yoursite.com for the mobile version. (This allows users to browse directly to m.yoursite.com if they know of the convention.)
On www.yoursite.com, sniff the user agent and test to see if the user's browser is mobile. If so, direct the user to m.yoursite.com.
There are sniffers written in various server languages (PHP, Perl, whatever) that you can probably use. Check the licenses. Here's an example of a sniffer written in php.
From Wikipedia's article on user agent sniffing: "Websites specifically targeted towards mobile phones, like NTT DoCoMo's I-Mode or Vodafone's Vodafone Live! portals, often rely heavily on user agent sniffing, since mobile browsers often differ greatly from each other. Many developments in mobile browsing have been made in the last few years, while many older phones that do not possess these new technologies are still heavily used. Therefore, mobile webportals will often generate completely different markup code depending on the mobile phone used to browse them. These differences can be small (e.g. resizing of certain images to fit smaller screens), or quite extensive (e.g. rendering of the page in WML instead of XHTML)."
On m.yoursite.com, provide a link back to www.yoursite.com. Users who click on this link should NOT be redirected back to the mobile site, and how you accomplish this depends on your implementation.
You may want to follow Quirksmode for his emerging articles about mobile testing.
3: Templates output different data chunks depending on the user-agent, and maintain separate stylesheets
Like (2), this requires you to sniff the user agent. Unlike (2), you're still using all the same page logic and don't have to maintain two separate sites. This might be okay if you're just dealing with a blog or website that's mostly about reading data.
In your template code, you can say things like
if( $useragentType != mobile ) {
echo( 'bigBlockOfRelatedArticlesAndAds.php' );
}
This lets you mostly maintain one set of template files. You can also streamline the pages that you're sending to your mobile users, so they don't get a big bloated page when they just wanted to read your blog post or whatever.
The majority of mobile devices these days support "mobile stylesheets" which are simply alternate stylesheets to display things simpler. You can add a mobile stylesheet to your site in the normal way and include the media="handheld" attribute:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/mobile.css" media="handheld" />
Then those styles will apply to mobiles.
The only problem with this method is if your HTML is bulky, it may take a while for the page to load since most mobile browsers are slower (except Opera Mini). That's why the bigger sites like flickr and digg use separate sites.
Additional notes:
Bulky HTML doesn't affect Opera Mini as much because it uses a proxy which does the rendering externally then sends a special "image" to the device.
Use simple, clean HTML then you can send the same to normal browsers and mobile devices
You'll have to check on the combinations of stylesheets with media attributes. IIRC adding the code above will make browsers ignore the first stylesheet. If you add media="all" to the first one, both will be used (and you can thus override the original styles rather than start afresh).
For checking how a weppage looks in a mobile Browser use Opera Mini Emulator
Check out the WURFL project. Its intention is to help developers target multiple phone browsers, and started way back before there was Mobile Safari, back in the days of HDML, WAP and XHTML-MP. It's up-to-date however, storing capabilities of modern devices such as iPhone. It has data on over 400 devices, and has libraries in Java, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, .NET, C++. Depending on how broad you want to target your mobile app it's something to look at. Here's a list of sites that use WURFL.
Another related project written by Luca Passani (the co-founder and maintainer of WURFL) is Switcher. You can use this to automatically redirect to the mobile version of your site.
Keep it simple, think opera mini and you will get it right.
(iPhone has more off a normal browser...)
Focus on content
Avoid plugins
Follow the web standards
Separate content from layout/design, use css as much as posible.
Use text and pictures.
Add the rest of the bells and whistles if you must, but make sure the the site:s content is always available even when the bells and whistles are turned off.
If you can browse the page with a simple browser like lynx and normal browser like firefox then you are on the right track.
For more info feel free to visit the any browser campaign
Edit: In case it is not obvious you work with different css for different types of browsers, but always use the same content.
Visit the css zen garden for a nice demo.
Update:
Adding a link to css media types, and as stated by others it is the handheld option that is interesting.
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/media.html
You have to design two differents sites to do this?
Yes
How can I know if the site is accessed by a mobile browser?
Your programming language has probably some way of looking through the client's information. PHP, for example, has a superglobal variable $_SERVER that has all kinds of information of both the serving server, and the visiting client. In this case, you would be interested in the value of $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], which would give the following result, should I visit a page:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/528.16
This tells you that I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.6, using Safari 4.0. There are known keywords for various mobile browsers. One version of iPhone's browser, for example, has the following user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3
the "iPhone" already gives it away, but is further confirmed by the keywords "Mobile" and "Safari"
Most sites have a slightly different sub domain for mobile sites (most use "m"). e.g. flickr uses m.flickr.com
(there is a recommendation to use the .mobi TLD but I've never seen that used)
Make the design super simple, don't use too many graphics, where you need to keep them as small as possible.
This might be helpful for the design.
I would probably construct a different set of pages for mobile users, making use of the same business objects etc. as you're using for the main site.
If the differences between the design of the two sights isn't to great you might be able to get a way with just serving separate CSS files?
Your site should limiited to the mobile phone which can support on maximum requirements. you can not even entertain all the mobile phone.
Your web site should have different set of css style, and HTTP AGENT must check the client type according to the request Css selection should take place .