Hi everyone! Im just beginning to build websites with no formal training. I taught myself when I built my own site, but now I have a job that asked me to update the company’s website. I’m just putting the finishing touches on the site and checked it out on my phone, and it looks awful on mobile devices. I know I should’ve checked along the way, but at least now I know never to make that mistake again!
My question is, are there any plugins or anything I can do to make my site look good on mobile devices without completely changing the theme and basically starting from scratch? I tried APM, Any Mobile Theme, and a few other options but haven’t had any luck. I’m open to trying these plugins again, as its definitely very possible that I just wasnt aware of how to use them correctly. Any advice or experience is VERY much appreciated!!
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I don’t know of a plugin that would take any theme and make it mobile friendly. Typically you specify how pages should look for mobile, tablet, and desktop at the theme level. If your theme doesn’t offer a lot of options like that, the easiest route to mobile friendliness might be sticking with your current theme and adding some custom CSS for tablet or mobile screen sizes and then making the adjustments you need until those devices look good enough.
Did you make your own theme? Usually the theme controls the layout, unless you don’t some crazy stuff with your content and specified values that are larger than a mobile device.
Making things look good on mobile is all down to css.
What do you mean by looks bad? Is the design not so great or is the text / columns/ container all over the place?
Did you make the theme yourself or is it purchased?
You or the theme author may forgot to set mobile device breakpoints for example (viewport)
If you are using a theme with responsive design it’ll be compatible for mobile and tablets and you don’t need any plugin for that.
However that seems you say you need to update an existing website not mobile friendly. That’ll be complicated because that asks to modify HTML and CSS. Furthermore if it’s based on an existing theme, you’ll need to have your new theme version with a child theme (or you no longer be able to update your theme).
In a case like that, it’s probably better to make a new version of the website with a base mobile friendly. It’ll be easier to do, for updates/maintenances and modifications, for you and for potential people who will need to manage the website.
This would usually be dependent on your theme, but if you are using a Page builder like: Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Bricks, Beaver, etc. then you should be able to control how your Desktop, Tablet and Mobile view’s layout to your liking. This can be easily be fixed with Padding or margin customization. Most of my clients will request to have their websites rebuilt rather than put up with odd layouts for Mobile phone view, or you can check with Developers and see if there’s an easy fix to it through coding, or other plugins.