Hello all.
Over the last few weeks a big "buzz" has been spreading in SMF's forum and throughout the internet about a new "mobility-friendliness" check that Google has put in place. Based on the preliminary reports that Google has sent to some webmasters, many SMF forum owners were notified that their site is not "mobile-friendly".
Google has specified April 21, 2015 as the date when a new search algorithm will be put in place, although, as usual, the specific details regarding the algorithm have not been distributed.
Although we do not necessarily agree with this new policy, we recognize our users' desire and need to be "compliant", so we have worked out something which may help. While, Curve2 (the new default theme for the upcoming SMF 2.1) is already responsive and, as such, is "mobile-friendly", for SMF 2.0 that was not the case. The default theme for 2.0.x (Curve) is already four years old and, as such, it is not responsive, and would take a great deal of effort to make it into something fully responsive (and, in the process, would likely break many mods.)
So, in order to tackle this problem in the most efficient manner, giving admins the ability to meet some of Google's requirement while maintaining a compatibility with legacy templates and mods, we have released a
MODification package which will bring some "responsiveness" to Curve. This will allow your 2.0.x forum not only to be accepted by Google's "friendliness test", but also to have a better display in mobile devices. This mod can be applied, as with any other mod, through the Package Manager in your forum's Admin section.
However, if you plan on using this, you should be aware of some potential issues and limitations:
- This MOD adds basic responsiveness to Curve. The theme does not become "fully responsive".
- Existing MODs which perform significant template changes might display poorly.
- Existing Themes (especially Curve's variations) might be affected by these changes.
- This MAY not affect MANY custom themes that use their own templates which use different coding from the Curve designs. Such themes will need to have the changes parsed, tweaked and/or manually applied within their framework(s).
For these reasons, the changes performed in this mod will NOT be merged in the official 2.0.x series releases, but will be released, and supported, as an official mod.
Please use the
mod's support topic if you have any questions regarding the mod or any issues installing or using the mod.
The SMF Team
