Advantages of Theming of PSD Files into Drupal

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There are two things that most businesses look out for in a website. First and foremost is the visual appearance of the website and second is functionality both in terms of on page performance and off page on the search engines. To achieve this, one of the smartest things to do would be to go for PSD to Drupal conversion. This is one of the proven ways of developing a successful website. Drupal is a robust content management system which finds its use in websites of all genres. When you convert PSD to Drupal you achieve a website which becomes your most potent marketing tool and gives you the edge in the market.

Advantages of PSD to Drupal Theming

• Distinctive Appearance – If your website looks like ten others, you won’t build a brand out of it. Thus to stay ahead of your competitors, your website should be able to immediately catch the eyes of the visitors. This is exactly what PSD to HTML/Drupal theme offers, as you can design a website from scratch which will be made web compatible using HTML/CSS and be integrated into the Drupal CMS. You can customize the website as per your needs in terms of color schemes, structure, graphics used etc.

• Online Visibility – A PSD to CSS/Drupal website will be hand coded using semantic coding techniques. Each and every element in the website is well defined in semantic coding thus boosting the performance of the website on the search engines. The codes undergo W3C validation which stamp the quality of coding.  Hand coding also keeps the code base low helping your website render fast on the web browser.

• Browser Compatibility – Your website needs to be compatible with all the major browses namely Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. This is possible when you opt for custom developments of website where the Cascading Style Sheet is well defined and helps different web browsers render the website uniformly. If you miss out on this you are missing out on a substantial market share and losing out on the brand value.

• Security and Stability – In this highly competitive business environment your website needs to be secure and stable. It should be structurally strong to shield itself against unauthorized access and falling prey to viruses and Trojan horses. When you opt for PSD to Drupal conversion the manual coding ensures that your website is full proof. This isn’t possible when you use a downloaded theme as such themes are poorly coded on most occasions.

These advantages make theming of PSD files into Drupal a highly attractive proposition. Considering the importance of a website in today’s business you can’t afford to compromise with the quality of the website. Thus hiring the services of a company which has expertise in PSD to XHTML/Drupal theme development is a must. Be choosy and take a look at their portfolio as this gives you an insight into their quality. Make sure they offer you quality support services to deal with regular website maintenance and unfortunate situations such as website crashes.

5 Crucial Tips on PSD to Drupal Conversion You Must Know

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The World Wide Web is a highly competitive territory and unless you use a robust technology for your web development you will figure nowhere in the race. PSD to Drupal is one of the most popular techniques in the CMS and website development industry. This state-of-art PHP based open source CMS account for every genre of website you can think of – social networks, ecommerce websites, photo galleries etc.

It offers advantages such as modular framework, menu management, RSS-feeds, user account registration, web page layout customization and many more. Drupal developers have a large and active community where they exchange ideas and troubleshoot each other’s problems. When you convert PSD to HTML/Drupal there are some important things that you need to keep in mind to ensure that your website stays ahead of the competition.

Five Tips You Must Keep In Mind

1. Slice Precisely : You should slice your PSD file with surgical precession. Amateur developers tend to overlook this step and end up creating sloppy looking websites. You need to slice the file breaking it into logical sections of the website. Every slice should be put into a separate layer and exported individually as an image. These layers act as the building blocks of your PSD to Drupal template.
2. Clean Coding : The quality of codes will decide the success of your website and thus you need to adopt clean coding techniques when you convert PSD to CSS/Drupal. Use semantic coding techniques as this will make the website friendly towards the search engines and generate more traffic. Remember the golden rule – hand code the website as the auto generated codes contain a lot of errors which hurt your SEO score and makes you web page unnecessarily heavy.
3. W3C Validation : Once you have coded the PSD file it is very important that you validate them sticking to the standards of W3C. If there are any errors in your coding process, this validation will help you rectify them. This also ensures that your website will render uniformly across all the web browsers which is important to target a larger audience.
4. Integration : This is the final step in the PSD to Drupal conversion process. Once you have converted all the files into HTML/XHTML and CSS you need to integrate them into the Drupal CMS. The integration needs to be executed with perfection using the latest methodologies as this will decide the functionality of the website as well as the user control in the admin.
5. Professional Developer : Finally it would be wise for you to hire the services of a dedicated developer for your PSD to HTML/Drupal conversion project. The conversion needs a lot of expertise in areas such as cross browser computability, W3C validation, PSD to Drupal theme integration and HTML/XHTML/CSS mark-up languages. If these things aren’t executed properly you won’t have a robust website at your disposal. This makes it necessary for you to hire the services of a professional developer for the project.

PSD to Drupal Theming and its Steps

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Do you wish to convert your flat looking design into a gorgeous Drupal theme? If yes, then you are not the only one willing to do so. Several people prefer Drupal themes over simple PSD files but do not have any idea of how to do so. Here are some quick steps that can help you to convert PSD to Drupal theme.

PSD to Drupal theming is an elaborate step by step procedure. The first step is to open the PSD file which we have to convert from PSD to HTML/Drupal theme. The Photoshop document has to be broken into smaller sections by doing slicing. The text, the images, headers, footers and other small boxes like the login box have to be sliced into small separate sections.

The next step is to save these in a folder for images, numbering the sections from one to whatever number necessary. Now we need a text editor. A new page should be opened. This should be saved as the HTML page. Then we need a new page for CSS from PSD to CSS conversion. This can be saved as CSS-styles. Now we follow the similar steps with all the sections we have cut up and saved. It is to be remembered here that these maneuvers will also require an expertise in HTML commands which are exact and lengthy.

The next step in the conversion of PSD to Drupal Theme requires us to download Drupal. Web browsers and a text editor will be used as before for this PSD to Drupal theme step. We can now open the Drupal theme files once it is downloaded. This will also be saved and we can give a name like PSD to Drupal theme.

In the following step of PSD to Drupal conversion, open the theme files called Garland. In these theme files we will discover page.tpl.php file. Now we have to go back to the page where we saved all our HTML commands and here we change some of the content and headers to make it Drupal friendly.

The tag has now to be placed before the body tag. Again the necessary commands in HTML have to be given and a friend can be called to help in this section. This is painstaking work and steadily a lot of sections have to be changed to blocks.

As we continue converting PSD files to Drupal Themes, now we have to create a template page with intricate HTML coding. Your new theme name has to be renamed and all the regions added. We have nearly completed our PSD to Drupal theme. The Blocks can be configured and the commands for printing are ADMIN>>SITE BUILDING>>MENUS. Similarly blocks can be added by writing ADMIN>> SITE BUILDING>>BLOCKS.

Our theme is complete now and it’s time that we pay attention to the tiny details in customizing our web pages. We can place the Block we have made on various pages as we deem fit. The coloring can be matched for effect and in case it has to be changed it can be wearisome. So the initial theme that is thought of should be written down together with the colors to be used and the blocks of images and text to be used.

The main part which can be a little tiresome is the coding part in the PSD to Drupal conversion. It takes a long time before one gets the feel of the conversion. So convert PSD to HTML/drupal process is well worth learning technique because Drupal is an open source site that offers highly usable features and is changing to take over the world of open source development.