Further to my recent discussion about mobile compatibility, I have run Oxwall.org through the Google mobile friendly test. It failed - Google gave the following reasons
- Text too small to read
- Links too close together
- Mobile viewport not set
- Content wider than screen
Not only will this affect oxwall.org but also all oxwall based sites. Those using the mobile "version" are not safe. Since it is an entirely distinct entity, only the pages that have been added to it are deemed mobile friendly. The majority of your content will not be available in the mobile version, so users will have to be directed to the desktop version. Those pages will receive the same judgement from Google as above and it will consequently ignore the site.
Besides, making someone hunt for incompatible content is just poor customer service.
While I have posted on uservoice already, native cross device compatibility is far more critical to the survival of oxwall than any of the other ideas currently up there. Google are pretty much ignoring sites that it feels are not mobile friendly and I don't want oxwall.org, or any of the sites that run its software, to lose out.
If the Oxwall team does not make it easy for people to adopt oxwall, it will die. Great progress has been made over the last few years and oxwall is otherwise fantastic (excluding the htaccess problem). I just don't want to see that all go to waste.
At Geek.Zone, we worked around the problem by paying $30 to use the Exodus Black Edition theme. All well and good, but as above, Oxwall must be natively cross platform compatible if it is to survive.
By the way, I must say that I find it interesting that the Oxwall team have turned off their own mobile version on oxwall.org - why is that?