Top six tweaks to make the Suffusion WordPress theme mobile-friendly

I use the Suffusion theme on a couple of WordPress sites and have found a simple way to make it play well on mobile devices without the need for a theme switcher. Just tweak a couple of things, and you are good to go with the same interface on large and small displays. Suffusion is free and has a ton of options.

After installing the WordPress Suffusion theme, check the following settings by looking at the main WordPress dashboard and then going to:

“Appearance >Suffusion Options > Layouts > Default Sidebar Layouts”

1. Set “Widths > Page width type > Fluid/Flexible width [Why? The fluid format handles most of the resizing work for mobile displays. The default fixed width guarantees the pages will look bad on unpredictable screen sizes.]

2. Set “Sidebars > How many sidebars” to a value of 1 (the default). [Why? Adding more sidebars makes the display more complex, and increases the problems of horizontal resizing. If you can get along with no sidebar you could set this value to zero, but most sites will need a sidebar.]

3. Set “Fluid width settings > Width of page” to 95%. [Why? This will allow the pages to expand to the maximum size of whatever display they are on, with a little bit of airspace on the horizontal sides. This setting pays off for you as the screen sizes get smaller and smaller.]

4. Set “Fluid width settings > Maximum width” to 1200 (the default). [Why? This setting only kicks in for large monitors. It could be larger, but during development be sure to test your site constantly using monitors and devices that have relatively low horizontal pixel displays.]

5. Set “Fluid width settings > Minimum width” to 600 (the default). [Why? This setting helps keep typography consistent on smaller displays. It could be smaller, but during development be sure to test your site constantly using monitors and devices that have relatively low horizontal pixel displays.]

6. Set “Sidebar width settings” to 200 or less. [Why? This gives more space to the main content area and keeps the focus on one main display area to simplify the user interaction with content on smaller displays.]

Have you found another good trick for getting the Suffusion WordPress theme to play well on mobile devices? Share it with us!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.