PSD to WordPress Using SCSS (CSS Preprocessor)

Introduction

PSD to WordPress is a process that most developers follow to create a unique, vivid, and highly-aesthetic website. By hiring adept WordPress developers, you can ensure that your website doesn’t use typical templates and stands-out. HTML elements must be displayed effectively on a web page and the credit goes to CSS. This fact is always very well recognized by WordPress Developers. However, as a dedicated WordPress Developer, you might face the challenges of maintaining CSS files while keeping them readable and organized, when you start working with large, bulky or complex sites.

As a developer, it is not only essential to build the site, but also vital to manage its standard and performance. And hence, it is no secret why many developers recommend using a preprocessor language such as SASS.

Before we start a journey, let’s look at our related blogs in terms of SASS and PSD to WP.

• PSD to WordPress Conversion: An Easy-Breezy Solution For Your Next Project!
• When Should You Use A Preprocessor (Sass) in CSS Development?

Why And How PSD To WordPress With SCSS?

In earlier days, it was a challenge for us to create a WP website directly from the PSD as we were following an old process that includes PSD -> HTML -> WP.

For years PSD To WP with CSS has been my favorite method while developing a website. Of course, it saves time and money too!

SCSS preprocessor helps us to deal with the problems that CSS doesn’t. It allows us to use structural and file-based design, is easy to update, and reduces code redundancy and short lines of code in the appropriate structure.

Here, I would like to go with the easiest method in our article and not include any command-line configuration or package installations. Sounds good? This article isn’t meant to teach you Sass or explain why it is so powerful. Instead, I intend to show you how to integrate it with WordPress; the most common CMS available today and the one we love the most. In case you still find the process challenging, you can easily hire a WordPress developer to help you out.

Process

• After you are ready with WordPress on your server, you need to create SCSS structure into your theme.
• It is imperative to naming files and directories. It matters a lot in SCSS. Because if it is not proper, then it is hard to understand or debug existing features (of your WordPress theme) when other developers need to add or edit something new to the theme.
• Mainly it would be best if you create SCSS and CSS directory to your theme assets directory ( you have to give this path into the compilation plugin )
• Now, you need to decide the basic theme’s functionalities and modules; and add that sub directories and files for development.
• Let’s give you some basic idea for which kind of basic structure you will need

scss/ # Import all ‘-style.scss’ files
|
|- abstracts/
| |-abstracts-style.scss # Import all abstracts-style.scss files
| |- _fonts.scss # Font Import
| |- _mixins.scss # Scss Mixins
| |- _variables.scss # Scss Variables
|
|- base/
| |-base-style.scss # Import all base-style.scss files
| |- _reset.scss # Custom Reset/Normalize
| |- _typography.scss # Typography Rules
| … # Etc.
|
|- components/
| |-components-style.scss # Import all components-style.scss files
| |- _button.scss # Button Styles
| |- _input.scss # Input Styles
| |- _modal.scss # Modal Styles
| … # Etc.
|
|- layouts/
| |-layouts-style.scss # Import all layouts-style.scss files
| |- _footer.scss # Footer Styles
| |- _main-navigation.scss # Main Navigation Styles
| … # Etc.
|
|- vendor/
| |-vendor-style.scss # Import vendor-style folders
| |- Fancybox/ # Fancybox
| |- fontawesome/ # Font Awesome
| |- CustomScroll/ # CustomScroll
| |- SliderCarousel/ # SliderCarousel
| … # Etc.
|
`styles.scss # Main Scss File

• Let’s understand how to manage files in SCSS directories structure

//Vendor contains all third party libraries that we have included in our theme for better enhancement of the project or theme.

@import “vendor/vendor-style”;

//Abstracts contains all basic theme elements and core properties that need to be developed in a theme or project

@import “abstracts/abstracts-style”;

//Base Styles contains common CSS rules that use in whole project or theme, so we don’t need to apply each times

@import “base/base-style”;

//Components contains common buttons

@import “components/components-style”;

//Layout contains different sections that used in out theme like Header, Footer, Banner, Callout Sections etc.

@import “layouts/layouts-style”;

• After successfully creating the structure, we need to add a plugin for compilation. You can download the plugin from here (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-scss/ )

Plug-In Installation And Settings

1. Let me give you some configuration screenshots that may help set up SCSS for your theme or project. You can define the SCSS and CSS directory path.

2. Choose to compile options to generate CSS files; we are giving you the best setting for the project.

3. It will automatically add a generated stylesheet to the header by enabling the below option.

Advantages With SCSS Over CSS

• It offers you to set variables, functions, and mixins as per your requirement.
• Write SCSS in a nested view that is easy to understand and easy to debug, and the compiler will generate CSS as you have many options like expanded, nested, compact, crunch and debug.
• It contains fewer codes so that you can write CSS quicker.
• It is effortless to develop large or complex structural projects with a minimum amount of complexity.
• If you know how to design with CSS, it is very easy to deal with SCSS.
• If you want to use any available CSS libraries, you can because it is compatible with all versions of CSS.

Disadvantages

• If the developer is not following proper naming conventions, it is quite tough to understand the flow of the theme.
• It will compile only main directories, files directly and generate CSS, so you have to make sure to import all subdirectories files in the main directory properly.

Conclusion

SCSS helps you write a structural base clean, comfortable, and with few CSS code lines in a programming construct. Suppose you are commencing on a new WordPress Development project and have some standard designs or have any future goal to add some modules. In that case, you must go with the SCSS because it is straightforward to handle many modules in an organized way. It can allow you to perform basic calculations, create functions, and reuse multiple CSS properties to single line code using mixins. If you still have any dilemma with PSD to WP with SCSS, feel free to reach back. We would love to assist you with all your queries and confusions. Apart from that, if you are finding it challenging to follow the PSD to WordPress conversion process, you can hire a WordPress developer to help you out.

Originally published at https://www.zealousweb.com.