[Dynamo]

Hey folks,
For some time its making me wonder about what's best theme type for web platforms, A Responsive Theme or having a seperate theme for Desktop & smaller device each.

Websites like facebook, twitter uses seperate theme for mobile users, While Github on the other hand uses a Responsive theme instead.

So which one really would be best ?


Well currently from developers points for view, I liked the seperate theme option more durable

Here are view of its pros (as I see):

• Easy & Faster development: By using 2 seperate themes, it would be easy for developer to manage the themes in more faster way and gives him more freedom while designing it since he won't have to think about both theme's template at same time.
  
• Load time Decrease: For mobile theme when dev don't want to show few elements, He can simply remove those codes from theme in case of seperate themes.While In responsive themes, Dev really don't have much choice other than Hiding the element via css which still would consume website loading time though it won't be shown. Responsive Themes have this as a major drawback which makes me uncomfortable to work with.
  

But I see few cons also for having seperate mobile theme:
Like in an article, Google has specifically said that responsive design “is Google’s recommended configuration.”
So I guess it would lead to degrade SEO maybe?
Though Google also says: a single URL for the content helps Google’s algorithms assign the indexing properties for the content.
So as long as the website have same link for both themes, we are good for SEO.

These were my thoughts, I also want to know from rest of you about same. And which one you like more and why?

I am still currently thinking about whether this forum should have 2 seperate themes for different devices or have a responsive theme. Hopefully I would able to get into some conclusion after this discussion.

Regards,

[LightDestory]

I think that separate themes could be a nice choice if you use a sub-domain, such as "m(obile).post4vps.com" (you can look at Cloudflare's auto mobile-redirect service, it's free).

Using an All-in-one theme with responsive feature could help but it will be a pain to handle for a medium/high volume of css properties.

[deanhills]

@Dynamo One of my main considerations would be maintenance of the themes, particularly with myBB if you are going to stick with myBB. Trying to upgrade myBB with one theme is already a major headache. If you have two themes to maintain this would be double work. For other Forum software like Xenforo - I don't have experience, but since it's paid, and quite expensive, I'm almost sure they have options that are available within the system of the forum so you can apply two themes without loss of SEO - I don't know for sure but I know Xenforo premium is a few steps up from free myBB - but then again, do we need to go that high? Those kind of Forums are more intended for large corporations who are trying to engage their customers on sophisticated platforms.

From a SEO point of view - I'm not an expert here but @xdude may be able to advise. I'd think logically that there may be issues when you use a separate URL for a second theme. So I agree with you it may be a problem.

Nice to see that post4vps is looked upon as mobile friendly by Google:
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-fr...Ql6VKUvTcA

[ikk157]

Hey folks,
For some time its making me wonder about what's best theme type for web platforms, A Responsive Theme or having a seperate theme for Desktop & smaller device each.

Websites like facebook, twitter uses seperate theme for mobile users, While Github on the other hand uses a Responsive theme instead.

So which one really would be best ?


Well currently from developers points for view, I liked the seperate theme option more durable

Here are view of its pros (as I see):

• Easy & Faster development: By using 2 seperate themes, it would be easy for developer to manage the themes in more faster way and gives him more freedom while designing it since he won't have to think about both theme's template at same time.
  
• Load time Decrease: For mobile theme when dev don't want to show few elements, He can simply remove those codes from theme in case of seperate themes.While In responsive themes, Dev really don't have much choice other than Hiding the element via css which still would consume website loading time though it won't be shown. Responsive Themes have this as a major drawback which makes me uncomfortable to work with.
  

But I see few cons also for having seperate mobile theme:
Like in an article, Google has specifically said that responsive design “is Google’s recommended configuration.”
So I guess it would lead to degrade SEO maybe?
Though Google also says: a single URL for the content helps Google’s algorithms assign the indexing properties for the content.
So as long as the website have same link for both themes, we are good for SEO.

These were my thoughts, I also want to know from rest of you about same. And which one you like more and why?

I am still currently thinking about whether this forum should have 2 seperate themes for different devices or have a responsive theme. Hopefully I would able to get into some conclusion after this discussion.

Regards,

The short answer would be: it really depends.

With a responsive theme, mobile users might face issues every here and there... for example: issues with the text editor on mobile with the current post4vps responsive theme.

However, with two separate themes for each, there might be missing stuff in mobile themes which the desktop theme has. For example, the post4vps mobile theme had many missing features that the desktop users had (I don’t remember which specifically as that theme no longer works).

Also, having two separate themes might change the way desktop users see content compared to mobile users. For instance, what might look perfectly sized on desktop, might be too huge on mobile. (Things such as text size, pictures, so on...). Not to mention that any issues with one theme would be annoying to describe to users who use the other theme.

[Khadeer143]

Well as per me I don't prefer for separate mobile theme for post4vps because I like post4vps response theme also without any errors or difficult to read threads or comments

[Littlemaster]

I earlier considered the facebook way is best, earlier most websites used redirection as pointed by LightDestory in this thread. Nowadays people are using smart phones and high speed data connection which are capable of rendering responsive theme.
Having a different version for mobile will be a headache in many processes such as modifying scripts, back up, etc. along with duplicated links in SEO. But surely it may reduce loading time on mobile and server load as mobile users may use only the resources they need.
In my case I like full featured version rather than the limited one.

[Honey]

While I think having a responsive theme and a uniform layout across all devices is a genius idea, I think Its really hard on the developers to implement it perfectly across all screens and sizes. Also for people who aren't technical and simply buy a responsive template and edit it, they might have scaling issues with smaller devices. (I first hand experienced this xD). So I think keeping a seperate theme for mobile and desktop is the way to go, tho this also does put a bit more work on the developer as you have to update information on both of the sites at the same time.

[humanpuff69]

Responsive is better . you only develop one template for two or more device . espescially when feature are growing fast you just need to implement it once instead of implementing to both version which is time consuming

mobile also have an advantage like more optimized sites . but for me the future is responsive and most mobile-only site is less featured and sometime confusing . responsive on the other hand is the best of both world

for me i use responsive site . it look great on both desktop and mobile and i think it is the future . mobile-only exist mostly when wap is around . wap phone / browser have really slow processing and transfer speed so mobile-only does make sense but now it is different . most phone is fast enough in term in performance or network speed

[rudra]

I like the responsive way. two different themes means double work almost for maintainers. with clean css and block arrangement , i find responsive way more useful than adaptive.

also SEO side becomes easier too.

only negative i see is slightly more traffic, but i think that much bloat is acceptable when compared to the behemoths that desktop softwares are becoming in terms of complexity and line of code.

I think always having a clear and updated document of block arrangement with good visual aid is enough for large projects even.

[tryp4vps]

The most important thing is: mobile is the future.

So, unless you have good confidence that your responsive theme will not upset the mobile users, you should always consider using separate themes first.

It should be the safest way. Otherwise those mobile users will not visit your website again.