Mobile Mobile Makes The World Go Round

[Al]

(so ignore it at your peril)

The default xenForo offering for mobile leaves a lot to be desired. Since more and more people are browsing the web - and therefore your site - via their mobile devices, what brilliant hints and tips do you have to make the experience more pleasant? Because many of us are old(er) I think we have this idea that people are looking at our communities on desktop, because that's often how we view them. But many people don't even have a PC anymore and mobile is the way they access content.

Let's put our heads together and get our communities ready for 2021.

 

[Cedric]

2021 he said… did your thick finger get in the way, or are you still living in the past.

I must also admit, doing admin stuff on XenForo is a breeze. Uploading themes, add ons, doing upgrades. That is something Invision still isn’t capable of doing. But then Invision has a better mobile app.

 

[Al]

2021 was deliberate. We should have been prepared for this many years ago rather than playing catch up.

 

[Al]

And in case it requires clarity. When I say “we” I mean the developers.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I know you mentioned Xenforo. There's other software that are way behind Xenforo in terms of mobile accessibility. MyBB doesn't even have a responsive theme out of the box, which is crazy since literally every other software does, free or paid. Though you're right, I'm one of those people who visit forums mostly on a desktop, but I do visit them every once in a while on my phone. As long as a forum has a responsive theme I'm content, though I'm wondering what else would a mobile use need that a responsive theme can't give them other than the fact that there's not an app? I'm just curious to know, since I'm not a mobile user lol.

 

[Cpvr]

Mobile traffic currently amounts to about 59.99% of the internet traffic compared to desktop.

https://research.com/software/mobile-vs-desktop-usage

When it comes to mobile vs desktop website traffic, 59.99% of the total global web traffic comes from mobile phones. Meanwhile, 37.78% are recorded from laptops and computers (Statcounter, 2025).

In another report from Statcounter ("Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide," 2025), 62% of the global market share comes from mobile devices. Meanwhile, desktop devices account for 36% of the total web market share. Tablets contribute the least amount, at 2%.

In the United States alone, 50% of the market share comes from desktops, 47% from mobile devices, and 3% from tablets ("Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share United States of America," 2025).

It’s a rising trend that more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices than their desktop computers.

As long as you have a responsive theme like @Ravenfreak stated you should be perfectly fine. Xenforo’s pwa’s app makes browsing forums a lot easier, which gives XF boards an advantage over others.

The font on your forum should also be easy to read as well, so it’s in accordance with screen readers. Running a test through Google’s page speed test can help you determine if your font needs to be changed to be optimized for screen readers. https://pagespeed.web.dev/

If your forum has accessibility issues, it’ll have a hard time as well, which the search engines take in account with their rankings well. Accessibility issues are a ranking factor.

This also included “alt” tags on images, which tells people and the search engines what images are about.

Readable text and contrast ties directly into Core Web Vitals and overall usability.