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My giant mistake on mobile phone layouts and why I should have known better

25 March, 2018 By Yvon Prehn 7 Comments

Mobile phone mistakes
I made some big communication errors because I didn't check my content on a mobile phone.

This is bang your head against the wall, repeatedly, time. I know mobile phones are incredibly important in church communication today and getting more so all the time.

I know how important it is for your website to responsive, that means that it looks good on all devices from computer screen to tablet to video. I even wrote an article and did a video about it.

And I know WordPress automatically adjusts articles to fit on your phone.

But what I didn't do was check how my current home page actually looked on my phone. Until this afternoon that is, and then the head banging against the wall started.

Motivated by a desire to share content with pastors and other leaders I learned about my mistake

I spend most of every day at the computer and I know many of you do also and so for my new layout and site organization I tested all sorts of things on the computer. I was particularly happy with the little icons I had the head of the home page and thought they were such a neat way to organize things into overall content areas.

Today I was thinking about how the article going out tomorrow would be good to pass on to church leaders to read. They don't involve many images so I was thinking you could forward them and then your pastor might read them on his or her phone.

Worked out fine for the article.

But then I decided to check the home page of the website. The cute little icons I used broke the design and caused the home page to be a series of letters going on from screen to screen in long stringy lines. I thought about taking a picture of the mess and showing it to you, but it was too awful and I couldn't delete it fast enough.

I switched back to the former theme I used and though I now must figure out a new organizational system at least you can read things on your phone easily.

This was after I realized the BIG mistake I was making with my newsletter

Again, I had tested numerous layouts and templates and all kinds of things to make sure the newsletter looked good on the computer and looked good in the process of linking and via email.

And then I looked at it on my phone and was horrified that the first thing you saw was this big, screen-filling picture of me. (It was a little one to the side on the of the online version). You had to scroll down to get any content. I had a number of "unsubscribes" when I first sent this out and now I know why.

Also, most of the pictures didn't even come up.

That's when I decided to check out the website. . . . . .

What I'm doing now

After the beating up myself subsided (temporarily at least) I fixed what I could for now, but will have lots more to do in the coming days.

I'm sharing this because I do want you to be able to share the content I send out with your pastoral staff and other volunteers and now you can do that without embarrassing yourself.

Lots more on this it the coming days--I'm going to bed.

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Comments

  1. John Hake says

    26 March, 2018 at 4:09 am

    That is why I left WordPress and went to Xara
    I can see what my 320px variant looks like and adjust it and just as quickly tweek the 640 and 960 variants. editing the text in one variant is immediately reflected in the other two. I can also preview either the single page I am working on or the entire site in a choice of browsers.

    Reply
    • Yvon Prehn says

      26 March, 2018 at 10:40 am

      Makes great sense! The church is very fortunate to have you and your skills to do that!
      Blessings,
      Yvon

      Reply
  2. Michael Larsen says

    26 March, 2018 at 7:29 am

    Its not how many times we get knocked down that matters! Just get up one more time and press on!!

    Reply
    • Yvon Prehn says

      26 March, 2018 at 10:42 am

      Thanks so much for your kind encouragement and that is so true!
      Yvon

      Reply
  3. Mary Elliott says

    28 March, 2018 at 10:17 am

    I like what you are doing and am glad I am not the only one who works on a site for hours, later noticing that I omitted something or made a mistake! This is a good reminder to check out how it looks on all types of electronics.

    Reply
  4. Mary Elliott says

    28 March, 2018 at 10:20 am

    I was under the impression that many of the newer common website builders had means to make content look good on phones and tablets as well as computer screens.

    Reply
    • Yvon Prehn says

      28 March, 2018 at 10:46 am

      That they do….and that is one of the things that messed me up. Somehow this new template that I was using didn’t code the place where you could put icons correctly.

      I trusted my past experience and didn’t check it out right away as I should have.

      What I did was to immediately flip back to an older theme….and not sure I’ll continue to use this one…which deleted the icon setup and all was well. At least as the layout is concerned.

      What I am going to be working on in the next few days is how I can organize the site so that material is more accessible to all of you. I know I have so much and I’m back to my main issue of even I don’t know how to find/access/make use of all of it.

      But I know the Lord knows and I trust that when he promises to give us wisdom He will. And I know he cares deeply about church communicators who seek to share his gospel.

      Please continue to pray for me!
      Yvon

      Reply

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