XF 2.1 Google Mobile complaining about XenForo?

JamesAus

Active member
Since upgrading to XenForo from vBulletin 4.2.2, Google has suddendly started complaining with messages like the below.

Any ideas anyone?

Here's an example:


1596279924824.webp
 
For "content wider than screen", check for non-responsive ads. Also, your tables in that thread are too wide and don't seem to be responsive. You need to use 90% or 100% rather than a fixed width.

For most other things, I just go in and marked "fixed" without changing anything and a few days later I'll get another email from Google saying my fix has been validated and everything is okay now. That "feature" from Google is very flawed. I've been doing this for a good couple of years now and it always works - until the next time Google complains and then I just rinse and repeat and Google is happy again.
 
Something formed badly in your forum_view, unless you meant for their to be no margins or padding for the thread list. Looks a bit odd whatever:

Screenshot 2020-08-01 at 15.47.32.png
 
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Actually I've experienced the same issue on 2 different themes, the 2 most recent i've used. One made by themehouse and the other the new theme I have now which is called Ryzer. I have been suspicious the theme creators are not to blame after the 2nd theme had the same effect on Google Mobile flagging.

It's great you made this thread as I never took the time to complain about it. I'm not quite sure what the cause is, and I'm not 100% going to say that I think it's Xenforo themselves but if anyone knows what could be causing this I would like to know. This is definitely more then just ad placement.
 
For "content wider than screen", check for non-responsive ads. Also, your tables in that thread are too wide and don't seem to be responsive. You need to use 90% or 100% rather than a fixed width.

For most other things, I just go in and marked "fixed" without changing anything and a few days later I'll get another email from Google saying my fix has been validated and everything is okay now. That "feature" from Google is very flawed. I've been doing this for a good couple of years now and it always works - until the next time Google complains and then I just rinse and repeat and Google is happy again.

Thanks DJ - I've just tried that and it still comes back with "Page is not mobile-friendly". Those tables were created automatically by Vbulletin back when the thread was created, funnily enough back in 2008 !


Something formed badly in your forum_view, unless you meant for their to be no margins or padding for the thread list. Looks a bit odd whatever:

View attachment 231792

Agree with you there - this was the result of what we discussed in another thread to remove the avatars from alongside the thread list. Do you know how to add some margins/padding?

Actually I've experienced the same issue on 2 different themes, the 2 most recent i've used. One made by themehouse and the other the new theme I have now which is called Ryzer. I have been suspicious the theme creators are not to blame after the 2nd theme had the same effect on Google Mobile flagging.

It's great you made this thread as I never took the time to complain about it. I'm not quite sure what the cause is, and I'm not 100% going to say that I think it's Xenforo themselves but if anyone knows what could be causing this I would like to know. This is definitely more then just ad placement.

Yes, it does seem very strange, as I've been running vBulletin 4.2.2 for years and years and never come across this before and that thread was created in 2008. A few days after upgrading to XenForo and the errors start. I'm supposing the Mobile code for vBulletin 4.2 is better than XenForo 2.1, and it needs fixing from the developers here?
 
Agree with you there - this was the result of what we discussed in another thread to remove the avatars from alongside the thread list. Do you know how to add some margins/padding?

Something formed badly in your forum_view,
It's actually not badly formed (ie no missing closing tags) but is due the edit I suggested in the other posts

I have responded the (hopefully) the fix for in the other post.

But I believe this is not whatever is responsible for the Google notice.
 
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This particular example is almost certainly related to the code tags a few of the posts. These create content that's significantly wider than the page, but we place it in a scrollable container, but matching the expected layout is exactly the point of a code tag.

Frankly, we consider this to be a false positive from Google. These containers don't affect anything else on the page and the scrollable behavior is fundamental to the functionality.
 
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