Quote Originally Posted by raybark View Post
Actually Bruce, I think you're missing something. Yes, the mobile site is free, and apparently works pretty well, but it seems to me that adding Tapatalk might actually broaden the appeal.

It costs you nothing to implement, folks who don't already have it are not required you purchase it, and folks that do have it have the opportunity to use it or not.

By not offering it, you are forcing folks like me - who frequent several different forums - to switch applications in order to read the posts here, making it less appealing.

It is obviously your choice, but unless it interferes with your current script, I cannot see why you'd pass up the opportunity.
Thanks Ray for your thoughts. I do understand where you are coming from and there were other issues that I didn't go into which helped finalized my decision to not go with tapatalk or even the custom vbulletin app (that I could have offered users here for free if I could afford the setup fee and the annual maintenance fee to keep the app updated.)

When I installed tapatalk on our test forum and purchased the app with my android phone (2.99 cost for pro) I found an issue with the interface. It adds a pop-up to the site that offers the tapatalk app/ alerts users of the app. (which seemed cool at first). If a user chooses to go get the app - all is good, but if they ignore the app, then they get re-directed to the main forum and not the mobile forum. It seems to conflict with either VBSEO (our SEO software that rewrites our urls for relevancy or the programing of the mobile site - maybe both??). I was never able to get it to play well with both our mobile site (which is programmed to recognize mobile devices and switch to that version of the site) and the tapatalk application enabled at the same time. And I'm not willing to go exclusively with an application that costs users to post when I can keep it free for everyone with a little extra coding/editing work on my part. The vbulletin app seemed like it was going to be great, but the initial expense kept me from getting it and after some time of it being out - I'm glad I didn't since they have now moved away from that feature and it is buggy and often crashes.

I'm really bummed that you have to switch applications to read and post here using your phone, but at this point with the new mobile skin update nearing completion, I don't see us changing directions for the time being. If Google analytics starts to tell us a different story, then I will obviously look into the application again at that time. I know more and more people are starting to access the net with their phones. I'm hoping that eventually we can have a dedicated application that can go on a phone or tablet that is just for OrchidTalk, but that too is probably a ways off for now.


Sincerely,
BD