Redirecting to mobile website

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

ya – you can use http rewrite rules, or you could use javascript, but the latter might not be as feasible because if they have js disabled on the pda, it won’t catch. http rewrite happens on your server based on their user agent, though, so that would be much more reliable…

that said, as you can see from this list:

https://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html

there are quite a few user agents out there in mobile land. here’s an example that finds iphone and itouch (as claimed by the author – by that i mean i’m not up on what the user agent is for these devices):

https://webdirect.no/mobile/apache-rewrite-rule-for-iphone-users/

basically you’ll have to expand on that (if your isp allows you to use .htaccess files or overwrite this type of control – a lot might not, so you’ll have to check with them)…what’s happening here is all in the rewrite condition and rule – so to take an example from another blog:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “Windows CE” [NC,OR] #Windows CE and Pocket PC
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “NetFront” [NC,OR] #PalmSource WebBrowser 2.0
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “Palm OS” [NC,OR] #Eudora Web Browser for Palm
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “Blazer” [NC,OR] #Handspring Blazer Browser
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “Elaine” [NC,OR] #RIM Devices
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “^WAP.*$” [NC,OR] #WAP Browsers
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “Plucker” [NC,OR] #Plucker Offline download client
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “AvantGo” [NC] #AvantGo Service
RewriteRule ^index\.php https://www.yourdomain.net/pda.php [L,R]

basically if the browser’s user agent matches one of these strings, then the rewrite rule kicks in…

it’s not the most basic of concepts and rewrite stuff can be quite touchy, so it could be tricky to implement, but that’s how you’d go about it…

hope that helps a bit!

sitruc

[Mark Cookman]

Heh thanks Curtis – whenever I have a query it seems you have posted an answer on it!
After finding (what I presume is your great work on) the mobi Cow site I am inspired to start “mobifying” my site too.
regards
Mark

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

[mark cookman] “what I presume is your great work on”

actually not mine…but glad you like the cow feature!

always glad to help out when i can… 🙂

sitruc

[Mark Cookman]

(heh I just sussed sitruc ….) I spent the night reading about mobi sites but didn’t really get much hardcore XTML stuff.
Im planning to start off from scratch with a redirect.php and a print hello world; page.
may I ask you;

Whats a good place to lurk around to pick up knowledge to create an iPhone/Blackberry friendly video delivery section of my site?

I’m tempted to go for youtube (with all privacy settings on) but it seems such a cop out and there is probably a no commercial use blah in there somewhere.
cheers
M
.

[Don Manj]

I work for a design agency and we use a web service to detect mobile devices when they hit our client sites.

There are a few of them out there, but we have used handsetdetection.com most recently.

[Barry Latimer]

Hi,

Detecting a mobile phone browsing your website these days isn’t that hard I have used a few different tools to do this

Here is an example in PHP
https://mobiforge.com/developing/story/lightweight-device-detection-php

Or there is a site called mobile elements(https://www.mobileelements.com) that has a simple webservice that tells you in the browser is a mobile phone or not quite easily

[Idel Fuschini]

Hi,
I suggest to see this project call “Apache Mobile Filter”.

Here where you can doanload the software: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mobilefilter/

Here where you can see the documentation: https://www.idelfuschini.it/apache-mobile-filter.html

[Idel Fuschini]

I have published the new version of Apache Mobile Filter, now the filter is give to you the information of capabilities as apache environment.
Now you can develope in any language (php,jsp, ruby etc.) and have the information of mobile capability.

Read more info here: https://www.idelfuschini.it/it/apache-mobile-filter-v2x.html

Mobile Evangelist

[Deshmukh David]

Best method of Redirecting your website to mobile website subdomain is shown on this link: https://www.deshmukhelectric.com/engineering
The website also contains files which you can simply download and upload to your website with minor changes.

[Mike Lynn]

Here’s an article I wrote which describes in detail how to accomplish mobile browser device detection and redirection.
Perl/CGI:
https://www.mlynn.org/2010/07/mobile-device-detection-and-redirection-with-perl-and-cgi/
PHP:
https://www.mlynn.org/2010/06/mobile-device-detection-and-redirection-with-php/

I tend to avoid javascript because of the device limitations. These examples will show you how to accomplish detection and redirection without javascript. The code for the examples is freely available at the web site:
https://www.mlynn.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=2

Enjoy!