Confused re Mobile Skin and Mobile Connect

[storrm]

Hi,

I'm about to purchase a VBulletin 5 license but I'm confused about the Mobile Connect option. What I'm looking for is a forum that is 'mobile friendly' ie. reformats itself to more readable on a mobile device or tablet rather than just rendering the normal web view. To enable this, do I need the mobile connect software or is there simply a skin available that in conjunction with a browser detect plugin correctly chooses the appropriate site rendering. if so, what does Mobile Connect give me above and beyond this?

Thanks

[Kent55]

The software itself does come with a mobile skin. The mobile suite is to have a mobile app for your forum.

[BirdOPrey5]

Hi,

I'm about to purchase a VBulletin 5 license but I'm confused about the Mobile Connect option. What I'm looking for is a forum that is 'mobile friendly' ie. reformats itself to more readable on a mobile device or tablet rather than just rendering the normal web view. To enable this, do I need the mobile connect software or is there simply a skin available that in conjunction with a browser detect plugin correctly chooses the appropriate site rendering. if so, what does Mobile Connect give me above and beyond this?

Thanks

The term for what you are looking for is "Responsive Design" and vBulletin 5.x does have a responsive design meant to reformat itself based on the screen size. No mobile app is required for this to work.

Please note the responsive design is not yet perfect in VB5 and there are bugs being fixed that are causing some issues on some devices. You can view this site on your mobile devices so you know what you can expect.

[storrm]

thanks for the responses guys. It looks like the 'responsive design' or 'mobile friendly skin' is what I had in my head. Will this also work for a v4.2 based forum? Where can I see the mobile application working to see if this is something useful for us?

Cheers
Matt

[BirdOPrey5]

You can download the app vBulletin Community Forum from the Apple App or Google Play stores (for free) and see how it works, it is the Mobile App for this site.

The Mobile App is the same for all versions of vBulletin- that is the mobile app looks the same whether is is connected to a VB 3.x, 4.x, or 5.x forum.

vBulletin 4.x does not have responsive design- it has a separate light-weight mobile style. The mobile style is adequate for doing basic functions on the forum but is a little boring compared to a true responsive design style.

However there are choices available- both free and paid 3rd party mobile styles exist.

[IggyP]

i was just checking out a "fluid" style i purchased for vb5 and was kinda surprised how well it looked/acted on mobile...still havent published my app yet to compare tho, waiting until its possible to edit posts on mobile devices......