Make a mobile site for your blog in 3 steps with Google Reader

Now a days there has been a trend of accessing the web through the phone.

The reasons are:-

Its its easy as all carriers have decent data speeds and in most the browsing is free.

Ease of use as one carries the mobile phone all the time unlike a computer.

So why not convert your blog to a blog that looks great on mobile phones. To view this blog on mobile mode go to http://m.mtaram.com. For this we would be using the built in functionality of the Google Reader to render the feed for the mobile phones.

What you need:-

1. You blog RSS feed URL

2. Access to your Domain control panel if you are hosting your own blog. Or you can register a free domain name of the numerous sited found on Google and redirect it to your mobile blog using a free URL redirection service.

Step 1.

Login to your Domain Control Panel.

Create a sub-domain like say http://m.mtaram.com

Step 2.

Open your Blogs RSS feeds within Google Reader. The URL looks like http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/mmwd [the bold part is the RSS feed of my Blog via Feedburner]. You can use any RSS feed or burn your own Feed using Feedburner.

We need to modify this URL for mobile view. To do so add a /m/ to the URL between reader and view. http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/mmwd.

Step 3.

This can be done in two ways.

First: You can permanently redirect http://m.<yourblog>.com to ">http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/<your feed url>

Second: You can create an index.php file and specify the redirection in the index.php

Open a notepad file and copy paste the following

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: <your blog url>" );
?>

where you would be replacing <your blog url> with the modified Google Reader URL.

And you are done. Pass on the ULR of your mobile blog to your fellows and readers and enjoy.

Apart from this there is a plugin for wordpress that detects the device and renders the blog. But some how I did not like it and opted for this faster and easier method.

Tags: google reader, howto make a mobile blog, mobile blog, wordpress