Developing, promoting and running sites for mobile devices is still a bit of an emerging art form and one of the best ways of getting to know it is using forums to ask questions, make contacts and share your knowledge. In the PC web world, forums like Sitepoint and Digitalpoint play a really important role at the grass roots level, so great to see the same thing developing in mobile internet. Here's a quick review of what's out there. If you know of any others or use some of the one's we've listed, give us a shout in the comments and we'll update the post.
.Mobi forums
This is a really interesting place - the types of people that hang out in this forum are "domainers" (people buying up dot mobi domains e.g. real-estate.mobi etc), affiliate marketers and webmasters from the PC world moving onto mobile. There's also a great group of people who have just got into building mobile sites for the first time, because it's so quick and easy to learn vs developing for the PC web. There are some good sub-forums - best are mobile web design (everything from SEO, navigation etc), mobile advertising and the boards for posting your new .mobi sites and getting feedback on them. Mobility.mobi also runs does a prize for ".mobi of the month". There's also a fairly busy marketplace there for sites and domain names. All in all a great place to hang out.
Dev.mobi is a mobile web resources site run by the dot mobi domain operator. They have done a good job putting this site together to help people develop mobile sites and put a lot of effort into it. As well as blogs, resources and an emulator there's also a forum. The general forum is probably the busiest here - overall the place is quite quiet at the moment. However, again, there are editors from dev.mobi who will answer questions so its still a good place to go to ask things and read the posts that are already there. Overall the forum suffers a bit from having a few too many subforums and the wrong order for them. Maybe they should buy mobility.mobi?!
Product and company forums
Admob forums are a place you can ask questions about admob and its services (either as an advertiser or publisher), there is also some general discussion e.g. how to advertise and promote your mobile site. This is a good place to pick up info on the sort of click thrus and cost per click people are doing in mobile at the moment. The forum is pretty quiet considering how much business admob is now doing but it's still a place you can post up problems/ questions etc and someone will generally reply. Worth checking in now and again to see if there is anything new.
Bango are absolute old school pioneers in the world of mobile with their payment system starting up around 2000/ 2001. They are now doing other stuff like mobile analytics and web to mobile trigger services. Their forum is not exactly buzzing BUT there is some high quality stuff on there, a lot of it posted by the bango employees. A good place to ask technical questions and get a decent response. Let's hope Bango can make it a bit busier.
Betavine was setup by Vodafone to create a forum for engaging with independent mobile developers. The are collecting a fair bit of decent info and resources over there and providing a platform for distributing apps. The forum there has waaay too many categories for the amount of traffic/ usage it has. The most popular forum seems to be the one full of people complaining about Vodafone's approach to mobile internet content adaption. However, fair play to Vodafone for hosting the discussion and engaging with it. Basically, this is a great place to check stuff with Vodafone e.g. blocked ports etc.
Forum nokia is an amazing resource for mobile developers. At one stage in the early 2000's Nokia Toolkit (mobile development kit) was an absolute lifesaver. Anyway forum nokia has ... a "forum" or "discussion board" which is an absolutely brilliant place covering the ins and outs of Symbian, messaging platforms, browsers and so on. It's probably best as a way of learning about all the very latest technologies like Flash Lite, Location and widgets.
mailing lists
Momolondon goes through periods of being quiet but you can guarantee that a large proportion of all the mobile people in the UK and Europe are plugged into it. Great places to ask questions, really high quality audience and you get to find out about the mobile monday events. Super helpful community if you have a technical question.
This mailing list is focused on technical aspects of mobile web development, for "mobile programmers to discuss, share information and help one another". This isn't the place for clueless newbies though:
"Don't post if you don't know what you are doing.
*YOU MAY BE BANNED INSTANTLY!!!!!*
If yor question reveals that you lack basic
web programming skills, you will be banned instantly.
Extremelly poor knowledge of the english language
is also likely to put you on the fast track out
of the list."
However, for those for whom its intended, the wmlprogramming group is a fantastic community and resource. The wmlprogramming group has been instrumental in co-ordinating the independent developer community's response to operator attempts to block and reformat mobile sites using transcoders.
General mobile sites
In addition to the specialist mobile developer forums a number of the more general mobile phone discussion boards have sections for developers. For example, the insanely busy Howard Forums or Esato.
Anyway, that's it for now, let us know if we've missed any good ones.
a happy user of forum nokia, didn't know about the others will have a look. good post.
Posted by: Jeff | 05/02/2008 at 11:55 PM
One forum that is missing is www.n95users.com, which I have found to be very active and useful.
Posted by: Xen Mendelsohn | 05/06/2008 at 09:00 AM
Thanks Xen - will check it out
Posted by: james | 05/06/2008 at 08:55 PM
A great site for mobile and .mobi resources is www.MobiSite.Org
If you weren't aware the progress .mobi is making on the mobile internet and the mass adoption by major players , you better take a look guys.
Cheers
Posted by: Guy | 03/05/2009 at 10:48 AM
thanks for the info about mobile web development.
www.designesia.com
Posted by: jill | 05/12/2009 at 02:32 AM
Hmm, betavine link doesn't work. They've moved to www.betavine.net
I looked through several mobile web development forums. Seems that approach of making sites mobile friendly is the same - having a separate version, except these guys with a fresh view on this:
http://www.mobilizetoday.com
Posted by: Phil | 07/15/2009 at 01:32 PM