How to Convert PSD files to WordPress

Building a website requires much more than merely designing a logo and adding a menu, a sidebar, a footer, and content. The components of this jigsaw must first be formed, and this too requires training and practice like everything else. The site design you build must strike the ideal balance between design and function, committed to ensuring a positive user experience. Although there are some factors to consider during this process, this does not require a PSD to WordPress expert. With the help of this article, you’ll be ready to take on the task yourself and ready to do some serious website designing. 

Step One: Creating the Web Design

You will need to perform comprehensive research to produce a website design that effectively ticks all the boxes of aesthetics and usefulness. First and foremost, who is your main demographic and what do they like to see? These are definitely important components of your study.

Another area of website designing that you should investigate is the strategies used by your competitors. These competitors are almost definitely more experienced than you are, so you are likely to learn a thing or two from their design! You should begin worrying about functionality when you’ve done your homework and have a clear notion of how your site should operate. Put everything pen to paper once you have figured it out. Trace and outline what you want your website to look like so you can keep track of it as you go. 

You’re ready to fire up Photoshop once you’ve completed the physical sketches. It will be easier for you or your front-end developer whoever will be building the HTML and CSS to produce an optimized, responsive layout if you use a column-based grid to establish an aligned design.

Step Two: Slice the PSD

Once you’ve designed a site design that you’re fully impressed with, the PSD to WordPress template conversion is essentially what’s left to be done. 

HTML5 and CSS3 are used to build all websites nowadays and are considered superior to XHTML and CSS2. The buttons, borders, gradients, rounded corners, and other characteristics are built as core functions of the CSS3 coding rather than as images. As a result, slicing the PSD file now essentially only entails slicing the PSD’s background pictures. Examine the website’s design for any images that might require slicing which means images that can’t be made with CSS3, such as the logo and background images. Use CSS to replace these background images to significantly reduce site load speed. Long loading times hamper traffic to your website, and thus doing this would bring a wide audience to your website.

Step Three: Create the HTML, CSS3 and JavaScript (jQuery)

It’s necessary to generate the HTML5 and CSS3 after you’ve cut the graphics from your PSD version. The first step is to create a new folder in which index.html and style.css will be created with a subdirectory for the images. Also, make a new folder to keep track of all of the JavaScript and jQuery files. Start developing the HTML5 and CSS3 after creating all of the directories, files, and subfolders.

Step Four: Build the WordPress Theme Files

Since you’ve completed the PSD to WordPress services yourself and transitioned the existing PSD files to HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, it’s time to proceed on to the next step which involves making your HTML a completely responsive WordPress theme. Continue to stick to the WordPress template structure to ensure that your themes are functional – The header.php file comes first, followed by index.php, footer.php, then style.css. The above four templates will be used on all of your site’s web pages. 

First, begin dividing the HTML files into sections after you have a complete understanding of how the template hierarchy functions. You can begin by simply creating a directory in your WordPress installation’s themes folder, which is located at /wp-content/themes/. In this file, develop the header.php file. This file could be used to designate the type of document along with all of the components that should appear in the page’s header, such as meta, titles, stylesheets, and javascript. Next, edit the footer.php and drop all of the footer components into your HTML file once you’re through with this. In addition to this, if your website’s layout contains a sidebar, make a file called sidebar.php and incorporate all of the necessary codings in this document.

After you’ve finished developing all of your website’s components in these documents, you can start working on your homepage. This can be achieved in a variety of ways. For instance, you can just create index.php, frontpage.php, or page-home.php; any of these files would suffice for your needs, so the decision ultimately is yours. After you’ve finished designing one of the three homepage templates, make sure to include all of the .php files you’ve just created. Now that you have your top, bottom, and sides ready, paste the HTML5 from your homepage in between them to complete your site’s homepage.

Step Five: Use WordPress Inbuilt Tags and Functions

After you’ve effectively developed your WordPress theme, you’ll want to ensure you can customize your webpage from the admin panel rather than having to update the theme file every time you want to make big changes. The add meta box feature is one of the most widely known WordPress operations for making all of your content freely accessible via the WordPress dashboard. Simply create meta boxes for each page’s material and you’re ready to go!

Finally, you must remember that a large portion of internet users view websites on screens that are considerably smaller than the ordinary workstation. Besides, users connect with these websites using their thumbs rather than cursors. As a result, an advanced website must be willing to respond to the numerous types of devices available. This is where the concept of responsive web design comes into play. Developers may create a website that adjusts its entire content dependent on the type of gadget it is being browsed on using responsive design. 

All you have to do now is transfer your PSD to WP website from your production server to your live server. To get more assistance on this call Autus Digital Agency at 929-357-3255.