Migrating Your Existing Website Design to Katana

This document is for you if:

• You currently have a real estate website (examples: an older RealtyNinja website, another real estate website system, a custom one you had made, etc.)
• You want to switch your website over to Katana (our new theme engine)
• You want to try and keep the same customized design on your new Katana website

Katana is our new website theme engine and it uses unique layout options, widgets and page formats to achieve high-quality, modern website designs. For that reason, simply re-using your old website's theme graphics and banner images most likely won't work well with Katana. Katana designs typically use large photos and responsive (mobile-first) design elements which adapt and change as the user's browser or screen size varies.

For example, say that your current (non-katana) website has a banner at the top of your homepage. In that banner, you have a photo of a city, your headshot and your logo all in one image. That approach works great when your website is designed for one standard/set size, such as a big monitor. Unfortunately that approach doesn't look great in today's mobile world, because simply scaling down that same image wouldn't look very good on all screen sizes. Your logo would be too small... and if you had any text in that image, it would most likely be illegible on a small screen.

The solution is that each component of that banner graphic be made separately, and in a way that looks great no matter what size the viewers screen is.. from a big monitor all the way down to a phone. For example, here's a semi-custom Katana design at various sizes:

Notice that everything resizes properly and remains legible. We're not simply stretching and squeezing the same graphic. The logo remains top/center (and at the same size), the background photo adjusts, the headlines, text and buttons all remain legible.. and special elements such as your navigation menu, phone number and social media icons all look great at any size.

Can you get this working on my new Katana website?

Our design team will need to review your specific website's theme and see what elements we can re-use from it on the new Katana site. Some websites will be very simple (for example just transferring the logo at the top of your old site to your new Katana site) and in those cases we won't charge for the service. In most cases, your graphics and customizations will need to be professionally re-made for Katana.

If you want to go this route, please contact our design team by emailing info@realtyninja.com with details of what you want done. They will be able to provide you with a time and cost estimate for your project.