Mobile site redirection on iPhone

[fivesixseven8]

Whilst I can fully see the benefits of redirecting to the mobile site for regular phones, the iPhone has a proper browser and really doesn't need it IMO.
There seem to be bug where the full site/mobile site selection isn't cookied either. This would make it less annoying at least. Or, just exclude the iPhone user agent from the redirect logic!!

[Stu R]

knew there was something I was going to whinge about. t'is rather frustrating.
The mobile site isn't bad, but really the normal site is fine on the iphone. The thing that really gets on my wick is the classifieds, it really isn't nice to browse on the iphone in mobile mode.

[PetrolTed]

I think it's just the home page that's redirecting. Bookmark the classifieds and the forums and you'll be ok.

[Mr Will]

There is a "View Full Website" link at the bottom of every page which will get back out of the mobile site.

If you then bookmark the page this takes you to then it should allow you to avoid being redirected in future.

[Stu R]

ohhhh I must be getting more blind by the day, hadn't seen that!

Thanks Will!

[fivesixseven8]

Mr Will said:

There is a "View Full Website" link at the bottom of every page which will get back out of the mobile site.

If you then bookmark the page this takes you to then it should allow you to avoid being redirected in future.

This is what I use to get me away from the mobile site. But... why can't you cookie this and then read it on future visits?

I do have classifieds and home page bookmarks, but I tend to use the 'Pistonheads' link from the GassingStation pages if I want to get from the forum to the main site.

[RacingPete]

fivesixseven8 said:

This is what I use to get me away from the mobile site. But... why can't you cookie this and then read it on future visits?

I do have classifieds and home page bookmarks, but I tend to use the 'Pistonheads' link from the GassingStation pages if I want to get from the forum to the main site.

That is a fair point.

The mobile redirection works before cookies are read so it is hard to look up this information first, but it only works on the http://www.pistonheads.com/ and not http://www.pistonheads.com/defualt.htm so we could make the home links go straight to this page and it wouldn't redirect. We will have a think about it and test some settings to see if we can improve the experience.

[fivesixseven8]

RacingPete said:

fivesixseven8 said:

This is what I use to get me away from the mobile site. But... why can't you cookie this and then read it on future visits?

I do have classifieds and home page bookmarks, but I tend to use the 'Pistonheads' link from the GassingStation pages if I want to get from the forum to the main site.

That is a fair point.

The mobile redirection works before cookies are read so it is hard to look up this information first, but it only works on the http://www.pistonheads.com/ and not http://www.pistonheads.com/defualt.htm so we could make the home links go straight to this page and it wouldn't redirect. We will have a think about it and test some settings to see if we can improve the experience.

Thanks Pete.

I assume the redirect works by reading user agent values? Perhaps you could just exclude the iPhone from this list? Might make for an easier solution?

[miniman]

fivesixseven8 said:

RacingPete said:

fivesixseven8 said:

This is what I use to get me away from the mobile site. But... why can't you cookie this and then read it on future visits?

I do have classifieds and home page bookmarks, but I tend to use the 'Pistonheads' link from the GassingStation pages if I want to get from the forum to the main site.

That is a fair point.

The mobile redirection works before cookies are read so it is hard to look up this information first, but it only works on the http://www.pistonheads.com/ and not http://www.pistonheads.com/defualt.htm so we could make the home links go straight to this page and it wouldn't redirect. We will have a think about it and test some settings to see if we can improve the experience.

Thanks Pete.

I assume the redirect works by reading user agent values? Perhaps you could just exclude the iPhone from this list? Might make for an easier solution?

But for most users the mobile version is far superior to browsing the normal version on an iPhone.

[RacingPete]

fivesixseven8 said:

Thanks Pete.

I assume the redirect works by reading user agent values? Perhaps you could just exclude the iPhone from this list? Might make for an easier solution?

Yes it works on the user agent values. The quick fix would be to remove the iPhone from this list but as we have over 2 million impressions from the iPhone it is our single most popular way to browse PH by mobile. I agree that some of the mobile features are not as good as the full site and some users may wish to use the full site instead of the mobile, but the majority of the feedback love the mobile site.

The user agent is the best method to let people know a mobile site exists so it is important to keep it as part of our mobile strategy. Though we will endeavour to make things easier for either way you surf PH and will look into minimising the mobile redirect once you have chosen full site option.