Aiming for Android app-like Joomla website? Mobile Joomla will work for you

The incredible success of Android devices hasn’t stopped developers from actively working on innovative Android app development projects for clients and even for their own business. While most of them are busy developing apps for their clients, there’s a group of developers which is choosing the web app route and opting for creation of websites that look and act like mobile apps. If you too are using a Joomla CMS powered website and are inclined on making it run flawlessly as an Android app then you’re on the right blog. Here, I’ll be explaining everything about the Mobile Joomla extension that will let you build an Android app mode for your existing Joomla website.

Mobile Joomla- What its all about?

Mobile Joomla is basically a free extension that helps you in shaping up your Joomal website in a way that it appears as an Android app to users who try accessing your website via their Android devices. This extension will allow you to redirect the mobile users to a specific subdomain where Android users will see one thing, Windows7 Phone users another and the iPhone consumers an entirely different version of your Joomla website.

Mobile Joomla- How to install it?

Prior to proceeding ahead with the installation of Mobile Joomla, ensure that your webhost has the following configurations or features:

• MySQL 5.0
• PHP 5.0
• Joomla! 1.5 or 1.6
• Zip PHP extension
• 100 MB of database disk space
• bzip1
• mysqli
• a minimum of 64 MP PHP memory limit
• GD2, a renowned PHP Library for image scaling

TeraWURFL- An important component of Mobile Joomla

Being one of the most crucial components of Mobile Joomla, TeraWURFL occupies a whopping 25Mb space in the MySQL database. Thus, TeraWURFL is the location where information regarding the Mobile Joomla to function is stored.

Mobile Joomla- Configuring it for your Joomla website

After having downloaded the Mobile Joomla file from the internet, just un-compress the same. Once you’re done with this, you’ll be able to upload the extracted Mobile Joomla file with the help of Extension Manager as displayed in the below screen-shot:

After successful installation of Joomla Mobile extension, you can either leave it as it is or choose to customize it further.

A brief on changing Mobile Joomla Configuration

There might be situations wherein you’d feel the need for tweaking the original Mobile Joomla extension settings. For doing so, all you need to do is simply go to the Joomla! Administration page and click on the Components tab-> Settings as shown in the below screen-shot:

On having entered into the Mobile Joomla settings, you’ll notice an interface containing 5 unique tabs viz: Global Settings, Smartphone (XHTML), iPhone, WAP and iMode.Here’ s quick overview on what all you can do with each individual option:

• General Settings- Here, you can choose to enable or disable the caching, sub-domain support(this means you can point out each type of mobile device to a specific sub-domain such as iPhone.site_name.
• iPhone tab- Here, you can choose the iPad support, images scaling and modules that are utilized for the iPhone display of the Joomla CMS powered website under focus.
• Smartphone(XHTML)– Here, you can choose the Smartphone i.e. XHTML support for your Joomla mobile website.
• WAP– Here, you can choose the WAP support for your newly groomed up mobile-Joomla website.
• iMode– Here, you’ll be able to set the iMode for your mobile Joomla website.

While the scope of this blog doesn’t include an in-depth description of all the options, you can easily style your website for display on different devices. Moreover, you’ll also be able to gather the flexibility of customizing the site’s appearance by modifying the settings. The promising Joomla 1.7 support rendered by Mobile Joomla definitely has a lot in store for Joomla website owners who want to do something much more with their site’s overall performance.

Conclusion

The much improved and clearer user interface of Mobile Joomla allows you to offer utmost flexibility to the advanced users. With the default functionality of Mobile Joomla extension being absolutely stunning, the wait is on for the next version of this amazing software. Let’s see what the next version brings in for us!

About Author: Victoria Brinsley is a professional content writer for Appsted, one of the leading company from where you can avail the popular Android development services and can also hire skilled Android developers by contacting her..