VAF mobile ?

[JordanGrant]

Doug: I've been reduced to reading VAF on my smartphone this week and its inspired me to bring up the "mobile" version of the site and /or forums. I thought someone once mentioned that vBulletin has some kind of version that optimizes for smartphones? If true let me please register my vote for the upgrade. I'd even pay for a VAF Android App to help fund the investment.
Happy Thanksgiving,

[ed. Good afternoon Jordan. From time to time I get requests to make the forums more mobile friendly. My business model depends on the advertisements in the forums being displayed - if they are not shown I don't get to put food on the table. Most of these mobile forum solutions strip out the ads. There might be a more suitable solution down the road, but at the current time I have not found it.

When I am using the forums on my iPhone, I use an app called Dragon Dictation to turn my spoken word into text. Then I just copy and paste that into the forum reply. There might be something similar for the Android platform and maybe it might make using the phone a little more palatable.

As an alternative to a smart phone, I keep an old first-generation iPad that I bought off eBay in my backpack and use that to read the forums when I am away from the computer. It's more than adequate and the keyboard is surprisingly easy to use and fast. But I know that's not exactly what you are talking about.

Yes, I dictated this using Dragon (grin).

I appreciate the input and wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving. dr]

[bhester]

I view VAF daily with my iphone and I like that it is the full web site and not a different version like some other sites which in most cases does not allow me to do certain things which the normal web site does allow. I can do everything on VAF with my iphone that I do on my computer and I like that.

[plehrke]

Originally Posted by bhester

I view VAF daily with my iphone and I like that it is the full web site and not a different version like some other sites which in most cases does not allow me to do certain things which the normal web site does allow. I can do everything on VAF with my iphone that I do on my computer and I like that.

I agree. I even use the full version of weathermiester as well on my iPhone. Do not like simplified version of anything.

[jbagley]

Write an iPhone / iPad app for VAF forums and charge $$ for it through the apple store?

Ok, probably more time and effort than you want to invest. But, the demographic of mobile users is increasing to the point that you can't afford to ignore them much longer.

[JordanGrant]

Fair enough Doug. Never know til you ask, right?

(Maybe I have yet another reason to acquire that iPad...)

[FresnoR]

Have you tried the search function after the iphone upgrade? It's now pretty difficult.

I for one would be happy to pay $$ for an iphone optimized VAF app.

[Snowflake]

I'd pay for mobile access too. I usually read it on my iPad, but sometimes my iPhone is all I have handy.

[Snowflake]

Further to this, I saw mention on another forum of an app called Tapatalk that can take care of the mobile conversion for many different forum types, including vBulletin (I *think* you're vBulletin based, right?). I don't know what it does with ads, but maybe this could be an option? Or have you already seen it?

[DCat22]

Originally Posted by Snowflake

Further to this, I saw mention on another forum of an app called Tapatalk that can take care of the mobile conversion for many different forum types, including vBulletin (I *think* you're vBulletin based, right?). I don't know what it does with ads, but maybe this could be an option? Or have you already seen it?

Tapatalk is great, I use it all the time...both reading forums and helping run them. But it would break the ad model.

They can build a custom app for you with custom ad options, but that starts at around $4K (plus of lot of time and effort) and still probably wouldn't capture the advertiser model used here very well...if at all. (ie. not using a big ad network, like Google, etc) And if I was an advertiser, I wouldn't be so fond of the traffic diverted to the app. (As a reader, I'd end up using the app at least half the time.)

So as much as I've posted in the past about wanting Tapatalk, or something like that...I'm not sure how to make it work in VAF's overall best interest. Basically, as DR said.

[NickAir]

Dragon dictation for my iPhone to help with VAF posting. I will try it.

Thanks for the idea Doug. I use the darn iPhone 50% on VAF.