Welcome to mobiForge

Welcome to mobiForge, the world’s largest independent mobile development community.

mobiForge is the site formerly known as dev.mobi… and if you’re interested in the amazing opportunities and technologies of the mobile web, then this is the site for you.

We’ve been running the site for almost two years now, and in that time it has truly passed our greatest expectations in terms of the size of the community, the content we’ve been lucky enough to publish, and the great feedback we’ve had from you. However, the time has come for an important evolution.

Confucius said that “only the wisest and the stupidest cannot change” (although presumably he said it in Chinese). He might not have been talking about web sites, but we do know how surprising it can be when a web site that you know and love changes overnight, and the name, navigation, and layout you’re used to suddenly disappears.

So we thought we’d take a minute to guide you through some of the changes. We think the new site is very exciting and want you to get the most out of it.

Firstly, why did we change the name? For sure, dev.mobi was a great name! After all, it’s a site all about mobile development, right?

Right. But that’s not the same as it being a site designed to be used *by* mobile users – which is what the .mobi in a domain name is intended to suggest. Although some of our users do access the site whilst out and about, the fact is that most developers and designers are using desktops when they visit us. For them we wanted to use a .com domain to indicate as much.

And “devmobi.com” just sounded a bit awkward. We liked the imagery of a hot, eager, blacksmith’s forge to indicate today’s frantic pace of exciting mobile development. The idea of mobiForge was born.

(Wait! Of course there’s also a mobile version of mobiForge, built specifically with mobile users in mind. Hopefully you won’t be surprised to discover that the address for that is mobiForge.mobi 😉 Try it!)

Secondly, the structure of the site has changed quite radically. We’ve built up hundreds of articles, blog posts and forums over the last two years, and they weren’t all categorised particularly well.

So we’ve built a couple of new ways to find and navigate through content. One is according to your level of experience and what you’re actually trying to do. So there’s a “Starting” section for all the educational material, books and training guides: if you’re a rookie, start here!

Then there are sections about “Designing”, “Developing”, and “Testing” your site. These are designed to complement a typical site creation process: as your mobile creations come to life, simply follow the arrows across the top of the site. The “Running” section talks about how to make your efforts successful after launch: how to make money off them for example.

You can also find articles by ‘technology’: this is for all you acronym lovers out there. CSS, XHTML, MMS, and all the rest – articles should be easy to find that way too. There’s also a great new search feature that lets you search not just mobiForge, but also our other web sites (such as DeviceAtlas and mobiThinking) and even other relevant resources elsewhere on the web, such as Betavine and wmlprogramming.

Thirdly, our all-new Directory… We’re often asked for lists of mobile web development agencies, tools we recommend, or where to get mobile ads from. But until now, there wasn’t really a single place to go to.

Enter the Directory: a set of hand-crafted listings of resources, companies, tools and even people that will help you get ahead in the mobile web. Take a look and see the depth of what’s out there already! And you think you or your company should be in there and are not? Let us know! We’ll be constantly updating the lists as the mobile web grows.

And finally, the new look itself. The previous site had a tasteful enough blue-on-white look, but well, we thought it was showing its age a little. mobiForge now parades a rather striking and sparky yellow on black look. (“Forge”, “striking”, “sparky”… geddit?). Yes, we know there are no curvy corners. That’s the point!

We think it’s a real privilege running this site for you and the 26,000+ others who use it, many on a daily basis. As you know, we’re madly passionate about the mobile web. And we’re also passionate about helping the people that will make it happen – people like you; the designers, engineers, and technology professionals all over the world.

Many thanks for your support, your feedback and your continued participation in the community. We’ll see you on the forums!

James, Ruadhan, Claire, and all the dotMobi team