A Dummies Guide For PSD To WordPress Conversion

The process of converting PSD files to WordPress codes takes a certain level of skills and vision. Lack of the knowledge or experience may lead to rendering the website futile. For getting the desired results, a developer needs to be well-versed with any of the markup languages such as HTML, CSS, jQuery, JavaScript or PHP.



Turning PSD to WordPress theme requires an experienced developer to follow a tried and tested process with the help of which the conversion becomes easier. As a user who wants to know what the conversion is, here are some key aspects that you should know.

What is a PSD file?

A Photoshop Document is termed as PSD. It is a file format in which the Adobe Photoshop files are saved. PSD files are migrated to the desired format, such as WordPress in this case, with the help of related tools and software. This is the reason why such files are called open files. These are easy to edit and flexible to use with web designing tools.

WordPress At A Glance

WordPress is a popular open source content management system. The platform features an elementary level of management which is ideal for non-programmers and beginners. Within a few mouse clicks, you can create an amazing website without any hassle. The CMS is written in PHP, which makes it highly scalable.

Also read this : How Does WordPress Benefit A Business?


How Is a PSD Based Website Converted To WordPress?

Slicing The PSD files

PSD files are decrypted into pieces. This is because a single image is large in the size and takes a lot of time to load on the devices of the users. This also calls for integrating different behaviors according to the segments. So, slicing the PSD images becomes necessary.

Hand-Coding HTML & CSS Programs

This is the main step involved in the entire PSD to WordPress conversion process. Here, the web pages are created and the sliced images assembled in the same way as in the original PSD designs.

Breaking HTML Files Into WordPress Theme Files

In the third step, the HTML markups are converted as per the WordPress theme structure. WordPress automatically stores a predefined set of files which a developer can use at a later stage to create web pages.

Adding WordPress Functions And Tags

In the next step, the web developers convert the PHP files into the desired WordPress theme files. This includes adding the necessary tags into the files. Often the developers refer to the online WordPress documentation as the reference for information to add the required functionality.

Featuring Custom Functionalities

Till now, the WordPress theme has been configured and ready to go. Here, the developer adds all the necessary functionalities to give a unique look and experience to the website visitors.

Conclusion

With the WordPress CMS being a trending web tool, there are many reliable conversion services which provide WordPress based solutions at cost-effective prices. So, it is always advised to pick an experienced firm who can provide you with the desired results.

What is Landing Page and How to build it for WP website?

It has become crucial to establish a strong web presence in this highly competitive business era. Well, doing so can be a bit challenging and a daunting proposition, especially for the startups which usually are low on budget. Even supposing that you have found some great techniques to create a solid online identity, but you still might lack time to follow each technique. Wouldn't it be better if you just concentrate on a single effective way to attract target audience? You can do so, by creating a gorgeous & functional landing page of your website.

What is a Landing Page and Why You Should get One?

A landing page is, basically a single web page which is built to achieve some particular objective like increasing the click-through rate, notifying users about a future product launch, getting user details etc. You can hire Wordpress developer who will provide you with a functional landing page as per your business requirement. Keep this thing in mind that not all web pages could be turned into landing pages. 

How to create a landing page in WordPress CMS?

1. Using Page Template to manually build a landing page

This is a highly recommended way to create a feature-rich and functional landing page. The main benefit of opting for the manual process is that it allows users to construct a tailored page as per the business needs. Irrespective of the WP template you picked for your landing page, you can create a custom page template and place it inside your selected theme. In other words, you can make a customized landing page using a blank template. For this purpose, you need to have expertise in CSS and designing.

2. Using a pre-made Landing Page Theme

The best way to build a landing page is by deploying a pre-built WP theme which is available on the web. At present, the internet is full of so many WordPress ready-to-use themes, which are specifically designed for creating landing pages. These templates come loaded with features such as effective CTA's, attractive sliders and several other great options that allow users to create beautiful landing pages in no time.

Here are some single page WordPress themes suited for building landing pages :

Appster : A lean Minimal App Landing Page for WordPress

Scalia Multi : Suitable for Concept Business, Shop, One-Page, Blog Theme

3. Use a Plugin

Another obvious way to quickly develop a landing page is to make use of a reliable plugin. You can open up the WordPress Directory and search for a suitable plugin which will help you in this process. If you are looking out for an easy way to build landing pages quickly and not much concerned about optimizing the code, then you can use the plugins for accomplishing your objective. At present, there are tonnes of free plugins available in the official WP Directory, and here are some of them which you can use:

• OptimizePress 2.0
• LeadPages
• Thrive Landing Pages

Summing Up

In this article, you will read about three different steps through which you can make a landing page for your business.

Use plugins to remove the Author & Date info from WP posts

By default, most of the WordPress themes will display a set of metadata on the blog posts published in the past. This usually includes at least the author name and the date on which the post was published. This information is useful for the readers but sometimes there are certain instances where the blogger might want to delete or update this information.

In this article, you would be reading about how Wordpress theme development can sort out this process. There are two different ways which would help you in this situation: Using a dedicated plugin or doing it manually by tweaking by your current theme files. If you don't have much technical know-how, hire a skilled & knowledgeable WordPress developer who will help you accomplish this process.

How to remove Author & Date information using a Plugin

If your theme doesn't have a Divi's functionality, you can take help of the plugin. The following two plugins which will assist you in this task. Both these offer slightly different functionality, so you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

1. WP Meta and Date Remover

This plugin enables you to remove both the author and date information from all the of the posts that too in one go. Once the plugin is installed & activated, all the meta info is automatically removed. It uses two methods to remove the data: hiding it from the front-end by using CSS and then removing it from the backend via PHP.

Key features:

Gets installed quickly and easy to setup.

Hides information from both the front & back ends.

Price: FREE

2. WP Old Post Date Remover

The plugin is specifically designed to remove date information only. This plugin comes in handy if you have lots of evergreen content or a website which is not updated regularly. If you like to keep the date only on the newer posts, you can choose the number of days you want the date to be displayed for.

Key Features:

Easy to install & quick to set up

Comes with an option to display the date on newer posts.

Price: FREE

How to Remove Author and Date Information Manually

1. Add CSS Using Jetpack

If you install Jetpack, then you can gain access to the Custom CSS tab where you can add the relevant code. But first, you need to activate the tab present in the Jetpack “Settings” screen. In your dashboard, select Jetpack, choose “Settings”. This would result in opening a new screen where you have to select “Appearance” tab and the scroll down to the Custom CSS button.

2. Delete Code From Your Theme’s Files

Another option is to delete the lines entirely from your theme files. While making the edits to your theme files, using the child theme and backing up your site prior to making changes. It's also good to ask your theme author which files contain the author and date information.

Summing Up

The above-mentioned points will help you in removing the Author and date information from the existing blog posts.

List of best responsive Menu plugins for WP-based sites

The navigation menus serve as an essential component of the successful website. In simple words, they help the visitors to move around. These menus help in improving the “flow” of your portal and encourages them to stay on the site for a longer time period. More time a visitor will spend on your site, the better will be chances of converting it into loyal customers. More than this, the navigation menus are an integral part of your site's overall design- they are displayed on the every unique page.

One thing that you should keep in mind is that a visually impressive navigation menu can make an average website look great. All this can be possible if you choose a reliable developer who offers superb WordPress plugin development services. Building and styling these menus should not be taken lightly from both an aesthetic or a navigational perspective. Fortunately, there are tonnes of menu plugins available in the WordPress directory.

In this article, you will read about five best responsive menu plugins for WordPress (including both free and premium plugins).

1. UberMenu (Paid- $19)

Let's start with the most powerful menu plugin of all- the UberMenu. With over 60,000+ downloads, this plugin is insanely popular among developers and users. Currently, the UberMenu ranks in third place on the leaderboard of best menu plugins. With this piece of script, you can build some of the most beautiful menus for your site. It offers incredibly simple interface which allows users to add an unlimited level of sub-menus for visitors.

2. Max Mega Menu (Freeware)

The “Mega Menu” functionality is quite advanced, meaning you will only find them in the premium plugins. However, if you have the right search skills, then it's possible to find it for free. The Mega Max Menu is an excellent menu plugin available at the official WordPress plugin repository. With the plugin installed and activated, your existing WordPress menus are automatically upgraded to mega menus.

3. Superfly (Paid- $22)

If you prefer vertical menus over the horizontal ones, then Superfly plugin is just made for you. It doubles up the fantastic space saver and allows you to utilize the full dimensions of the screen. This can be achieved by hiding the menu behind the toggle button in the top corner. When clicked, the menu slides into view, leaving visitors free to browse through your portal. Moreover, you can also choose to permanently anchor the menu to the side of the screen.

4. Responsive Menu (Freeware)

If you have zero budget for web development and want to add vertical menus in your portal then Responsive Menu will be best for you. With this script, you can build great-looking vertical menus and the best part is you can download all these free of charge from the official WP plugin directory.

In addition to this, the Responsive Menu also ships out an impressive amount of modifications, which cover all the usual customizations such as fonts, size, alignment, color, images etc. You can also upload custom backgrounds, logos, and icons, letting you add a personal touch to your menus.

5. Hero Menu (Paid- $19)

This is another plugin which will help you build mega menus. The Hero Menu plugin boasts loads of versatility & tonnes of customization options, meaning it allow users to create nearly endless menu designs. Moreover, Hero Menu also includes 250+ free icons, plus you can also customize your menu with over 650 Google fonts and infinite colors. And those who lack in designing skills, they will come across 60 stunning color pre-sets, build by the team of highly-skilled graphic designers.

Inducing Responsiveness To Your Images Via CSS

In this modern age world, there are a lot of techniques for building responsive images. However, the techniques are not same due to variations in browser support and complexities. One can make use of the srcset attribute, but it is a complex way of implementing responsive images as it demands several images, markups and the new HTML attributes (not well supported outside modern browsers).

There are lot of people that go for HTML to WordPress conversion so as to make intuitive websites for their business on all kinds of devices irrespective of the size and its orientation. However, in this article, we will simply work on height and width of CSS, which will further make it independent from the browsers property and thus will work on all browser and CSS. However, it will require a fluid design layout for your website. The concept behind this is to use CSS to make images a percentage length unit or any relative unit for making their width re-sizeable and give auto value to the height property.

img {

width: 100%;

height: auto;

}

What's a Responsive image ?

In order to know about a responsive image, we can take an example.

Div acts as a container of an <img> element.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="image01.jpg" width="960" height="640" />

</div>

The container has margins on the left and right as the container has 96% width property. The max width is of 960px so that the layout do not appears too wide on a bigger screen.

The container contains a <img> element of 100% width, so that its width so as to make the width equal to its container irrespective of the viewport's size, thus this makes this responsive. Further, set the height to auto so that the image scales in proportion to the screen.

CSS

div.container {

width: 96%;

max-width: 960px;

margin: 0 auto; /* to center the container */

}

img {

width: 100%;

height: auto;

}

The <img> element is always responsive even if we assign a fixed height and width to HTML attribute as shown in the markup (i.e. width="640", height="960"). This technique is best suited for content which has a fixed set of dimension via HTML.

Putting Responsive images in columns

In order to display more images on a small screen, we try to scooch in images in a columns. We often get to see websites which display galleries in a thumbnail on a grid style.

In order to make images responsive in columns, we only need to lessen the width property of the CSS and assign a display property value to the <img > elements.

We further have a couple of layout schemes namely: A two-columns layout and three-column image layout for images.

Two- column layout for responsive images

To get a two-column responsive layout, you need to set the width property of the CSS to 48% or nearly half of the container. Though, you might be thinking why not to 50%. The reason being that images have margins so we need to keep room for them as well.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="image01.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="image02.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

</div>

CSS

img {

width: 48%;

display: inline-block;

}

Three-column layout for responsive images

You need to use the very same concept in order to get a three-column layout for responsive images, all you need to do is to set the width of the container to 32%.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="img01.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img02.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img03.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

</div>

CSS

.three-columns {

width: 32%;

display: inline-block;

}

Adding Conditional breakpoints

Adding conditional breakpoints for responsive images is a good practice, and thus when the images grow smaller, the columns can merge themselves.

This can be done via media queries.

In code snippet used below, we will make images display in single column in smaller device such as smartphone, two columns on slightly bigger devices on phablets or tablets and four columns on much bigger screen such as a laptop or desktop.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="img01.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img02.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img03.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img04.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

</div>

CSS

/* For Devices of small size (e.g. smartphones) */

img {

max-width: 100%;

display: inline-block;

}

/* For Devices of medium size (e.g. tablets) */

@media (min-width: 420px) {

img {

max-width: 48%;

}

}

/* For Devices of large size (e.g. desktops) */

@media (min-width: 760px) {

img {

max-width: 24%;

}

}

Responsive images with full width

In order to get responsive images that always remain 100% of the device size, you need to just change the container's width to 100% and simply remove it's max-width property which is 960 px by default.

.container {

width: 100%;

}

img {

width: 100%;

}

These methods were no doubt simple and easy methods to cater mobile device users, but it's pitfall is that it will always deliver images of full size irrespective of the device used by the user. The smaller devices won't be able to take the advantage of high-resolution images which are served in full dimensions, and most of the devices won't be able to open the images even.

Further, if you would wish to improve the performance of your web app by serving your images after reading the conditions ( i.e. a low resolution and a smaller images displayed on small mobile devices and likewise with other devices.), you need to program with the srcset, pictures and sizes elements.