Suggestion: Support for the Tapatalk App for Mobile Browsing

[generalrose]

Hey guys,

I'm not even going to get involved with the recent drama. It's not worth it. I love this forum (even though I don't participate a ton and never finish any of the kits I start (which my wife hates)) and want to see it continue.

An obstacle for me and probably other users is the general forum interface on mobile devices. This is not a solely an AST issue, and honestly ASTs mobile interface is pretty good, but having app support could potentially lead to more activity.

From what I've briefly researched, adding Tapatalk support is simply adding a free plugin server side. Tapatalk makes their money from ads or by users buying an ad free version of the app.

[Tesral]

I thank you for not getting in on the drama.

App support? Oh Lordy. I have not a clue! It might be a great idea. No idea how to do it, or if you can.

I am a certificated Dinosaur that accesses AST with a thing called a "program" on a desktop computer (twin 27" screens and the power of a bank of cell phones.) I have never tried to access the site on my phone. Maybe I should. (I'll need a microscope.)

[Xen]

the first priority is to get the site upgraded, then update some features to make it faster and be rid of a build up of erratic 400+ and 500+ errors.

it was a bit of a speed read education for me, but as i was about to try out tapatalk i found this article basically saying it causes sites to become slow and that they are stopping support for it altogether.

https://androidforums.com/threads/tapat ... ed.1125895

There are a few important things to note here:
Tapatalk could not support these custom features
Tapatalk was making our website slow
Tapatalk was making moderation tedious
We made this change because we want Android Forums to be the best it can possibly be... and Tapatalk was holding us back.

that's just a snippet of what the staff said, but it was a pretty comprehensive deconstruction.

since i don't use mobile devices for sites except in emergencies, i would welcome your response to this and perhaps an another option?

alternatively, if you would be willing to exercise a little patience with us, you may see how the site performs after the upgrades.

[Xen]

i don't remember. the article was pretty damning of tapatalk in general though. i was ready to install it but had problems there. i took that as a sign it was not meant to be after reading that article.

if i had a team of techs working for ast, then i'd rock your technological world. alas, no such team. just me.