How to skip responsive design with Cloudflare + Developer Blog

#writing

Prerequisites:

Active Domain
Cloudflare Registration
DevDojo registration

Story & Implementation

This is going to be a quick post in which I want to share with you an awesome combo I discovered and am using on my website. So a little back story, I created and launched my website - asciinaut.sh. After 2 days of hardcore documentation, I finally managed to create something from scratch and not use a ready template. As a new developer, I think you can imagine what is happening with my head when it comes to full-stack... trying to learn HTML + CSS + JS + PHP (Laravel) in one take is... well, a little hard.

Why I'm telling you this, is because I now absolutely hate transforming desktop-ready websites into responsive, mobile-friendly versions of themselves. Anyway, so I am creating a blog and am struggling (more like 'sick of' adjusting stuff) with the mobile version even though I am using bootstrap. What I thought of is that before I created my own blog, I was already 50% done - I was using DevDojo's Developer Blog feature & I make use of Cloudflare's free plan.

What did I do? I used Cloudflare's mobile redirect with a CNAME of my DevBlog's URL - dennis.devdojo.com. And that's it - I now have a mobile version of my blog. More importantly - a mobile version that I don't have to maintain. Thanks, DevDojo!

Implementation

Assuming you already use Developer Blog and have a domain with DNS managed by Cloudflare, you should do the following:

Cloudflare setup

Log into your Cloudflare dashboard
Navigate to DNS
Create a CNAME record of your domain (e.g. mobile.example.com)
Navigate to Speed -> Optimization
Scroll to the bottom section (Mobile)
Select the CNAME from the dropdown menu on the right of the section
Select 'Keep Path'
Select the button to turn green - On.

Developer Blog setup

Open your Developer Blog in DevDojo.
Input the mobile version URL of your website (e.g. mobile.example.com)

And that's it! In a couple of minutes, you are all set up. Navigate to your website from your phone and enjoy the magic!

Conclusion

What is the conclusion? We as a developer community seem to have a great arsenal of tools to work with while creating online content... and I love it!