Did you know that every day, around 50,000 new WordPress sites get published? How are you going to stand out from the crowd in an ocean of so many different sites? One sure method of immediately attracting attention can be to create your own, unique, custom theme converted from PSD to WordPress. This would be designed specifically for your own site – and your site won’t be one of the thousands of cookie-cutter sites out there!
There are three standards when designing a website theme. PSD files and WordPress, and recently in the last few years, Bootstrap – a framework for developing responsive sites that industry professionals are using these days.
In this article, you’ll get a complete guide on how to combine all three: how to convert a PSD to WordPress theme, in 5 easy steps.
Later on in this article, you’ll find templates, ready for download, for you to use as a basis for this tutorial. In case you want to see other articles, please do visit other parts of our site, with in-depth tutorials and articles.
But why would you go after PSD to WordPress conversion?
What is PSD?
PSD is short for PhotoShop Design. This is because Photoshop is a single piece of software which is most popular with graphic designers and how most WordPress website designs are created. Using Photoshop, a designer will create a unique website design for you. This will be saved as a Photoshop design file or a PSD file. This design can then be given to WordPress Web Developer who will turn this into a theme.
PSD to WordPress is the process of converting a PSD file (Photoshop design file) to a WordPress template using Bootstrap or other frameworks and methodologies.
Most people who have been in the web design and development industry can easily understand this terminology – just like they would understand any other design or development terms which aren’t familiar to people outside the niche (kerning, typography, padding, CMYK, leading, fonts, etc.)
What is a WordPress Theme?
There are two main aspects while creating a WordPress website. The actual look of the website, and the content of the site. In WP, the most popular CMS for creating a site, what the website looks like is independent of the content. You could change the way your WordPress looks completely while still keeping all the content.
This is because what the website looks like is actually defined by a WordPress theme. Think of themes like you would for smartphones, for your desktop computer or laptop, or anything else which can be “skinned” to your preference. The template or theme you use can be used to “skin” the content, or give it a look and feel which you are opting for.
WordPress themes are a collection of PHP files which have “commands” or specifications that define the colors, layout and patterns, the styles, the fonts, the icons, the sizes of headers and text, the buttons and essentially the whole look of all of the elements of the website you are designing.
There is a whole industry in design and development, where you can either get your template for free or buy a premium one which is already made (typically called a premium), for anything from $25 to a few hundred dollars.
There is also the option to create your own custom design, rather than opting for a popular product that has already been created (and used many times before). It’s the actual process of converting PSD to WordPress.
Going forward, we will guide you to the exact procedure of creating your own design.
Converting a PSD to WordPress theme
In terms of our PSD to WordPress tutorial, “Slicing” your design file is the first and foremost thing in the entire PSD to WordPress conversion process.
The term “slicing” might seem quite confusing to you at first, but don’t worry too much about it. Slicing refers to cutting and dividing a single image file into multiple image files, each of which contains different design elements of the whole design.
Some people refer to those as splicing because it is creating separate elements from a single design “organism” which will eventually be rearranged or synthesized and morphed into a complete design.
It’s crucial since you can’t code a theme from a single image design file.
Therefore, to design an entire web page, you first need to slice the main image file into other individual image files and then put them together seamlessly.
About the author: Anna Wattson is a graduate of San Diego State University and a blogger online. She loves to write about tech, business, marketing, and many more. I’ve been working for companies like Figma to WordPress, Christian Marketing Experts, Gospeletters, and many more.
