Hi Robin. (and all interested)
Well, the first and main tip is not to lose patience with yourself (as one is not a plugin developer) or the actual plugin developer! They might not answer your email or question within a few minutes but that is because they are busy and you are not the only customer or client! 🙂
Also, the layout and basic (main) setup of the forum should be done on a desktop. Its a lot easier to visualize on a big screen and if it looks ok there it will look fine on a mobile device. I used IrFan View for windows 64 for all the forum image headers and it took a bit of time to get them sized right for both web and mobile display.
The main issues I had was….
A. Theme layout (Choosing the right theme for what you want is essential.) I have Astra which works together with the WPMobile native theme perfectly. Remember that the forum needs to work on desktop, tablet and mobile so web version and app should be as close as possible in layout etc
B. Images not resizing correctly (on mobile devices) that are attached to forum posts. This was fixed by using the plugin Meow Lightbox. before that, any attached images were displayed at full size so very often just a black screen or a white screen. It took me ages to work out that pinching fingers to reduce the image size was needed!!!!
I just have two things to fix now.
1. After registering an account on the app you are redirected to the “website” and not the “app” on your mobile browser to login.
Temporary Solution: Close the browser, open the “app” and log in there.
2. YouTube URL’s sometimes dont embed into a new post or reply. Just the URL is visible and you can’t watch the video inside the forum post.
temporary Solution: Tap the YouTube URL to open the video in a new window at YouTube
(The youtube thing is really annoying and happens in web version, mobile version and has been an ongoing issue since the site creation) 🙂
If anyone wants to look (you dont have to register to download the app or browse the site) its here https://iberianatureforum.com/ If you access the site on a mobile, there should be a notice at the top of the home page prompting the playstore download. Obviously only browsing is allowed if you are not registered.
I haven’t gone for IOS apple yet as the outlay of $99 a year seems a bit expensive as opposed to the $25 one off payment that Google asks for.
Although the forum is free, has no ads is small and suffered hugely from the attack of the big social networks it actually drives a huge amount of money making traffic to my commercial sites, particularly Wildside Holidays. I still dream of the day when people see the light and dump the excessive ad vomit from the likes of X, Fb etc…. I wrote a small comment here: https://iberianatureforum.com/forums/topic/facebook-and-forums-what-do-you-think/ (Some of the comments are really interesting!)
Anyway, If you ask me the only way forward for something like a bbpress forum is to make it mobile friendly with push notifications just like those big boys have. people are more likely to engage with your content when their phone goes ping ping and there is a link directly to the content in the notification no?
I’d love any feedback and comments!
