# Administration Category > Administrative issues >  Forum Applications for Mobile Phones

## Neville Bailey

Hi Dave,

Would it be possible to install the following two mobile phone forum application plugins onto the forum?

Forum Runner and Tapatalk.

Both are free to install as plugins on the forum, and they allow most smart phones easy access to the forum, without having to use the device browser.

I have a BlackBerry, and I use Tapatalk on another forum - very user-friendly and lightweight.

Thanks in anticipation!

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## Dave A

Hi Neville.

It's on the to-do list and should go in sometime over this weekend. I'll make a post when it's done.

The snag for now is I haven't finished cleaning up the mods I've made so far and if I load them too quickly it becomes difficult to identify which one caused the break. (A classic example, if you look to the left in my profile, the blog entry count has got tangled up with the thank you info).

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## Dave A

Forum Runner *should* be up and running. If someone uses it, please let me know that everything worked out fine, please.

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## Neville Bailey

Unfortunately I can't test Forum Runner on my BlackBerry, as they have not yet developed the app for BB. 

There is a beta version of Tapatalk for BB though, so I look forward to that!

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## Dave A

With any luck, Tapatalk is now working. If anyone uses it, please confirm it's working as it should.

For those wondering what this is all about**:

Tapatalk is a mobile forum app for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia. Tapatalk supports vBulletin, phpBB, IPB and SMF forums and forum owner can activate this service for free. Tapatalk supports all the usual forum functions plus full screen image viewing, image upload, caching (less reload), private messaging, all these features are accessible in just a few simple taps.

*Showing New and Unread Thread with Avatar and Number of reply:*


*Images are thread are converted to thumbnail and allow full-screen viewing*


*Ability to see Who's Online and what they are doing:*


*Ability to search by topics and posts:*


*Ability to upload images directly from Android and iPhone!:*



Check out http://www.tapatalk.com for more information!

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## Neville Bailey

Excellent - thanks Dave!

I'm using Tapatalk to type this reply. As I mentioned before, Tapatalk on BlackBerry is still in beta phase, so there are still a few bugs here and there. 

However, it makes it so much more convenient to keep an eye on the forum without having to lug your computer around. 

It's a lot easier than using the phone browser as well.

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## Dave A

And as you said - lightweight - at least for smart phone browsing.

On a PC, once you're past the first page load browsing the site takes next to no bandwidth. I was horrified at what it takes to browse on a phone - way worse than coming in from a PC for the first time. It's all the javascripts, I guess.

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## Neville Bailey

Hi Dave,

I've found another forum app, designed specifically for BlackBerries, called BerryBlab. 

Could you please make it available on TFSA?

I am finding TapaTalk a little too buggy...

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## Dave A

*installed*

Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes as soon as possible, Neville. They want a logo and I've used their default for now. I'll do a custom one once I know the app's worth keeping.

On Tapatalk and bugs - I must say I was more impressed with Forum Runner than with Tapatalk from a site owner's point of view. They seemed more coder savvy (they use a clean and powerful plug-in whereas for Tapatalk I had to hack some code which could cause upgrade issues). Just how buggy was Tapatalk?

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## Neville Bailey

Thanks Dave - BerryBlab looks good and FAR more slick than Tapatalk!

The only limitation is that it is a vBulletin forum app, i.e. other forum software won't work with BerryBlab. 

Tapatalk was bombing out on me regularly, images would not display etc.

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## Dave A

> images would not display etc.


That's exactly what I'm concerned about with BerryBlab. It relies on a script for images that I might or might not have activated at the moment. If images aren't loading as they should, let me know.

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## Neville Bailey

No problem with images loading on BerryBlab!

I'm very impressed so far, and the version number is still 1.1!

_Posted from my BlackBerry using BerryBlab_

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## Neville Bailey

Here are a few screenshots from my BlackBerry 8520.

As you launch the app, I am presented with a menu of forums that I have subscribed to:



If I select TFSA, this is my first screen - I can scroll down to see all the other boards:



I can see a list of the latest posts since I last logged on:




These are some of the settings that can be adjusted:



Here is a part of a post, including images:



Of course, I can start new threads and /or reply to posts.

What more can one ask for while on the move?  :Big Grin:

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## Dave A

:Cool: 

Looks like all I need to do now is make up a 50x50px PNG file  :Thumbup: 

Thanks, Neville.

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## Mark Atkinson

Dave, is BerryBlab still installed on the forum? 

When trying to add the forum to BerryBlab (newly installed on my phone) i get a 404 error.  "Check the URL string is correct, and the forum administrator has installed Berryblab" 

Hmmm..  :Frown:

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## Dave A

> Dave, is BerryBlab still installed on the forum?


Seems it has indeed gone walkabout for some reason. I'll investigate this eveining.

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## Mark Atkinson

Thanks  :Smile:  Would be awesome if I could easily get my dose of TFSA on my Blackberry when I'm not at the PC!

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## Martinco

Do I sense some addiction here ?

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## Mark Atkinson

> Do I sense some addiction here ?


Naturally!  Without my daily dose I can feel the withdrawal symptoms start to kick in!  :Drunk:

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## Dave A

Upon closer inspection, there is no obvious reason as to why Blerryblab isn't working. All the required files are present and accounted for.

Maybe I should point out this is not an auto-detect type of app. I think you have to add The Forum SA as one of your chosen sites using the Blerryblab app (somehow).

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## Mark Atkinson

> Upon closer inspection, there is no obvious reason as to why Blerryblab isn't working. All the required files are present and accounted for.


Hmm. Weird.




> Maybe I should point out this is not an auto-detect type of app. I think you have to add The Forum SA as one of your chosen sites using the Blerryblab app (somehow).


Well the app has an "add forum" button, which is where I got the error. I don't see anything else or any way I could do anything differently. Perhaps an issue with the updated version of vBulletin?

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## Dave A

With the transfer there have been some critical changes, but a quick skim through the code looks like this should all have been auto-detected. I can only suggest you try to add the forum when you're on this page http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/ as it's the home folder location of the Berryblab files.

If that doesn't work, this is going to take a bit of digging and I'll have to ask for a little patience. 

I'm hoping to take a week off work next week with the main goal of running over the entire installation of TFSA, cleaning up issues and adding a few things on my to-do list for the site.

Between the load issues on the previous server and load issues at work, maintenance on TFSA has been... less than optimal. I've been forced to focus on what I could drop as features rather than what I wanted to add, and have been dealing with broken stuff only when it's been fairly critical. 

Happily, the server limitation issue seems to be a thing of the past (at least for the time being). So now it's just a case of allocating some dedicated time.

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Mark Atkinson (07-Jun-11)

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## Mark Atkinson

> I can only suggest you try to add the forum when you're on this page http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/ as it's the home folder location of the Berryblab files.


Dave, you genius! That fixed it!  :Thumbup: 

At first I thought I had some settings wrong with my phone's APN, but then when I managed to add another forum I figured it couldn't be.  Thank goodness it was just something simple like that.  :Smile:  

Thanks for the help Dave.

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## Dave A

I'm chuffed that solved the problem. It struck me that if you tried just anywhere on the site (such as the site home page) there was nothing in the code to guide it to the key files it needs to work.

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## Chatmaster

Dave, can you think of anything you did today that can cause me having problems viewing the forum properly from my notebook using a Huawei E220 modem? I can't see any images since this morning. It looks really crappy without images and it seems all style sheets are gone.

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## Dave A

Try CTRL F5 for a full refresh of the CSS. The only settings I changed yesterday was to extend the TTL in the nameserver's SOA.

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## Chatmaster

Grrrrrr, I knew that!  :Slap: 
Did the trick, thanks Dave!

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## AmithS

Hi All,

Could someone please advise me on the best route to get tapatalk onto my android phone?

Thanks,

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## Dave A

The Tapatalk app download info page is here.

If you do go the Tapatalk route, please let me know. I deactivated the API here a while ago because no-one was using it. But if it is going to get used, I'll get the latest version and get it back up and running.

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## AmithS

Hi Dave A,

Thanks for the link, i will check it out.  Let me try it out on another forum i use and ill let you know.

Thanks,

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