making dynamice php site suitable for mobile phone - responsive

[Jarrod]

The frameworks make RWD more difficult to start with as they are trying to a) make a site look good on all device types/browser combinations, b) provide a lot of features out of the box that more complex web sites want (e.g. carousels for displaying photos) and c) provide flexibility so that you change layout based on device screen size.

For the museum site and the Forgotten Front site you already have pretty good separation of content (HTML) and layout (CSS). As I see it you have a few options to move forward to be more responsive:

* Adopt one of the big frameworks, such as bootstrap. This will require medium recoding to achieve layout etc. Personally I would say that would make sense if you had only just started Forgotten Front or you've decided that want to use some of the more advanced features (carousel etc).

* You could add a lighweight framework css to the page, remove the layout elements from your existing css and add the grid layout from the framework into your html. This would get you started on RWD and provide better device/browser independence. Rather than bootstrap etc. you could take a look at something like simplegrid or skeleton. They focus on just the grid layout rather than all the other features. This will still require some recoding of html, but you have less features in the framework css so less to take on board from day one and you are not having to maintain the layout for different device sizes.

* Alternatively stay with your existing HTML/CSS and extend it yourself. Take a look at media-queries (https://www.w3schools.com/css/css3_mediaqueries.asp) and possibly css grids. This will have the advantage that you don't have to change your html but will require you to understand more about the css structures and also you'll have to make decisions about your layout on different device types.

Whatever you choose to investigate I would recommend you take a look at Forgotten Front in responsive design mode in your desktop browser and see what it looks like on small devices (iphone, nexus 4 etc) and large devices.