How to force search engines to index desktop instead of mobile version of website - mobile-website

I have a website with both, a desktop and a mobile version. I am using Apache rules to redirect mobile devices to the mobile version of the website.
The desktop version uses the subdomain "www" and the mobile version "m".
How ever, Google seems to like the mobile version much more than the desktop version, so that the rank of the pages of letter are always worst than the one of the equivalent desktop version. And besides Google indexed much more pages from the mobile version than from the desktop version.
How do I tell Google an other search engines that the mobile version is just for mobile devices? Should a block the subdomain "m" completely with robots.txt? Or is there any way to tell those robots that a specific page like m.mysite.com/a-page is just the mobile version of www.mysite.com/a-page?

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Building app, mobile web app and desktop web app using Ionic

We will develop an app that we would like to distribute in through the following channels:
Android and iOS apps through Google Play and iTunes (the app will
use notifications extensively and presence in Google Play and App store is required)
Web app to run in web browsers on mobile devices
Web app to run in web browsers on laptop and desktop computers. We would like to support Chrome, Internet Explorer (starting from IE9),
Firefox and Safari browsers.
Our understanding is that Ionic is developed targeting primarily 1. and that the web apps in 2. and 3. above are not really what Ionic is intended for. We have looked around to try to understand if Ionic likely works for 2. and 3. and also made some quick tests ourselves.
From one of the links at the end: "Your webapp will run in desktop browsers yes, as it is made of html, css and javascript. The phonegap specific javascript calls (accelerometer, compass, file, etc) won't. Basically, if you stick to standard yes you will be able to port relatively easily your app to most browser, the job at this point being mostly a work of theming."
From another one: "I do know that FireFox is simply not supported. I don't know how well Ionic works in IE X."
To try it out we have built a limited version of our app in Ionic. From what we can see the app works for 1, 2 and 3. For example, it runs without issues on FireFox that is mentioned as not supported in the quote above. This means that to us it looks like the first quote saying that the web app will work in desktop browsers is correct.
I understand that this is a fairly generic question and might be hard to answer, but since we have found contradicting information when looking we are trying to understand more before making a decision.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Markus
Is it a good idea to use ionic to build mobile web version of a website?
Can Ionic Framework run in desktop web browser like Chrome, Mozilla, IE9+?
http://forum.ionicframework.com/t/ionic-components-on-ie/1826
Phonegap web app in regular desktop browsers
http://ionicframework.com/docs/overview/#css-sass
Ionic is tested for mobile only. Internet Explorer for example is not tested and does not properly handle a number of features in Ionic. Desktop browsers act differently than mobile browsers.
Ionic is focused on building native/hybrid mobile apps rather than
mobile websites.
As such, our browser support tends to be whatever Web View API is
available to native apps on a given platform. For Ionic 1.1.0
"xenon-xerus", that means UIWebView for iOS 7+, and Android 4.1 and
up. Windows Phone and FirefoxOS support is on our roadmap.
If it's cheaper for you to test everything on all different desktop browsers than to develop a version for it sharing the same controllers and services --- go ahead but it won't come "out of the box".
Also, I recommend looking at Electron to build desktop apps from webapps.
ionic is targting mobile apps only , but you can develop your desktop app using node webkit and angular material for example and share some code between your apps

Native Mobile browser based apps

Wondering if someone could point me in the right direction, as I am unsure of the correct terminology. I am looking to create a mobile website, which loads in a browser based application (iPhone, Android).
I have seen this done before. For example, the bank of america application is actually installed via the App Store, however, it is simple a browser window that loads the Bank of America mobile site (which is built to look and function like an app).
I find this to more cost-effective, as developing a mobile app is less intense, as opposed to developing applications for 2-3 different mobile platforms.
Can someone provide insight into the terminology or methods used to accomplish this? Looking for articles, examples, etc.
Thanks in advanced!
I would suggest to use IBM Worklight.
Worklight is an Eclipse-based visual development and server platform for mobile apps. Using Worklight and popular open technologies, you can build, test, deploy, and manage your smartphone and tablet apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone devices, with maximum code reuse and per-device optimization.
Worklight supports open technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Apache Cordova, and popular JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery, Dojo Mobile, and Sencha Touch.
Worklight offers extensive runtime libraries and client APIs that expose and interface with native device functionality.
Worklight includes a browser simulator so you can test and optimize the user experience of your mobile content on varying mobile devices.
Worklight consists of an IDE (Worklight Studio), a Java-based server, device runtime components, a web-based console for managing deployments, and an application center.
for more info see
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mobile/worklight/getting-started.html
Take a look at PhoneGap or Appcelerator, two of the bigger names in this "native wrapper" technology.

How to develop an Opera Mobile plugin?

I'm totally new to opera mobile addons. Can someone suggest me a site which can help me to get started?
I'm currently using a Sony Ericsson P990i. It is loaded with Opera Mobile 8.65.
I type "opera:plugins" in the Opera Mobile address bar; it showed me the list of plugins installed.
So, I'd like to develop plugins for my personal use.
Is there any tutorial/examples of Hello World for opera mobile plugin development?
Till recently we in Opera did not have the ability for running extensions in Opera Mobile. We have recently released a labs build with support for extensions http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/extensions-opera-mobile-labs/
The way to create Opera extensions is documented here http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/getting-started-with-opera-extensions/ The idea is to create extensions, and not exactly worry about desktop or mobile. Just creating nice extensions regardless of platform.

SEO-safe detect mobile user agent (iphone, htc, ...) and redirect to mobile version of website

What's the best way to automatically detect mobile vs. full screen devices and redirect to mobile site automatically? I'm concerned about SEO so it is safe to do a detection with PHP and redirect to mobile version without unwillingly sending Google to that mobile version?
If PHP is ok, what are good libraries to use?
It is good for usability to configure redirection to your mobile website.
The google webmaster blog has a very important topic on best practices for mobile sites, concerning redirection and duplicate content (!!!)
In my opinioun, a very comprehensive and up-to-date database (including source code in multilple languages) is WURLF: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
You don't need any special libraries to do that. User-Agent header will do the trick.

How to direct my users to my iPhone enabled site?

I have made an iPhone friendly version of my site, that I want to direct my users to.
The big question now is how to direct my users to this site. There are a few alternatives:
Redirect the user based on the user agent, e.g. if the user agent sent by the browser contains "iPhone" or android or whatever.
If the user agent matches the above criteria, display a notice on the original site telling the user that an iPhone version is available.
Which one is the most user-friendly? Another dimension to consider is the SEO aspect. How do I show Google that my site is iPhone capable?
I recently found some relevant posts on the Google Webmaster Tools homepage:
Help Google index your mobile site
Running Desktop and mobile versions of your site
phidah above has some good links, but remember: always include a link to view the desktop version. nothing is more frustrating than a limited mobile version when the desktop works just fine on the iPhone. there are exceptions, of course - for example if your desktop is mostly flash :p
This strikes me as more of a user experience question than a programming design decision. I would build either solution depending on what makes sense for your site, and your users. If you do go the redirect route, and the content on both version of the site are the same, I wouldn't worry to much about google. If the content is different, I would make sure both sites are visible to googlebot.
Nearly every site that I visit that has a mobile/iPhone version that just redirects me automatically, and then at the bottom there is a link to go to the full version if I want.
For SEO I don't think this would hurt anything, since web crawlers aren't run on mobile devices.
Check out the links below.
web dev kit
and for css info on detection
css Info
it is some of the better info I have found, hope it helps.
Kirk