Developing a website basically involves two important things- an attractive and user-friendly design and an efficient and functional website code. Both these things are necessary in order to do extremely well in today’s web surfing world. So to develop an interactive website, it is necessary to create good design along with amalgamation of an efficient user-friendly coding using HTML, PHP, JavaScript and CSS. This becomes difficult for non-programmers to work out with the coding of website. Thus, to abandon this barrier, the open source community has gifted WordPress as an open source website building tool along with content management system. This helps non-programmers in creating a high-quality website with the efficient use of WordPress.
Majority of the people structures the website design and create a PSD image of their design. At the very next step, they convert PSD to a functional WordPress theme that is quite tough but can be done efficiently using advanced level of programming as well as coding skills. It may require help of professional coders to convert PSD to WordPress, but once done it looks much better with the use of attractive design. Many of the people wonder that why most of the website owners prefer WordPress. The real fact behind this relies in the fact that it is fully functional content management system (CMS) that can be easily used by any non-technical person too. So going through these features, many of the website owners are fascinated towards building the website using PSD to WordPress tool. Let us have a look on some of the definitive steps for how to create website using this tool:
Step #1: Slicing the PSD
This is the first step in PSD to WordPress conversion. The term, “slicing” means to cut an image design file into multiple design files, each having different design components of the overall design. This is done using an image editing software, more preferably through Adobe Photoshop which makes the job easier to perform as well as easier to organize.
Step #2: Creating files- Index.html and Style.css
Next step successive to the above step is to code the sliced images into HTML or XHTML format and style it using CSS. For this it is necessary to have deep knowledge of CSS and HTML and for this many of the coders use website creating software like Dreamweaver or Fireworks. These sliced images with complete rollover effects as well as pixel perfect placement helps to create a responsive website. Thu, for convenience it is better to name the HTML file as Index.html and CSS file as Style.css
Step #3: Breaking Index.html according to WordPress theme file structure
The main purpose of PSD to WordPress conversion is to actually convert PSD design into WordPress theme and after that adding functionality to that theme using WordPress tools as well as plugins. Thus, in order to design an effective website, it is essential to design an initial HTML file according to WordPress’s theme file structure and then breaking single HTML file into multiple HTML files according to theme file structure. These are stored in Index.html file and later are divided into several other parts like index.php, header.php, sidebar.php and many other necessary feature files.
Step #4: Incorporating WordPress Tags
In WordPress, there are numerous inbuilt functions that can be used for adding all basic functionalities to the respective theme. One need not require using complex HTML codes; instead they can just add WordPress inbuilt function tags in the desired theme file to get the functionality. Rest of the workings would be taken care by the WordPress itself.
Step #5: Adding other functionalities
Now as you have created and activated a theme using WordPress theme, you can add additional multiple themes if you wish to add. Even if you need to modify an existing plugin, you just need to configure the existing plugin or install a new plugin using highly user friendly WordPress dashboard. As a result there is no need to go through the HTML code for doing required changes.
Thus, the PSD to WordPress conversion proves to be more efficient to create the website, especially for the non-programmers and for those who do not have grip over coding. These steps would surely prove valuable for majority of future web designers.
This article is written by Chris. He is one of the most renowned website designers and is popular in web designing world. In this post, he is guiding our viewers with some efficient steps to build website using PSD to WordPress technology.
