If you are in the quest to make your website one of the best, having a custom CSS is as right a place to start as any. CSS tweaks are necessary if you are to personalize every visual aspect of your site. The Cascading Style Sheets is one of the vital web design languages, which gives you a gateway to customizing the fonts, layouts, colors, and other appearance elements of your site. The reason CSS is so appealing is that it allows you to influence the look of your website, more than your theme.
As you familiarize yourself with your site, you will find the need to use custom CSS to customize its look. Jumping right in and attempting to add custom CSS to WordPress may not be the best idea. Instead, we have assorted and dissected some methods with instructions on how to add custom CSS to a WordPress site.
1. Using the WordPress Customizer
This option is the easiest method of adding custom CSS to a WordPress website. It doesn’t require any additional plugins. However, in case you switch themes, your changes will be lost, and you’ll have to redo it.
a) On your WordPress admin panel, select the Customize option under Appearance.
b) WordPress will present you with an option for Additional CSS at the bottom of the sidebar. Click on it.
c) You will then have a box resembling the one below to which you can add your custom CSS. In case you make any errors with your syntax, the editor will notify you so you can make appropriate changes. When you’re through, click on the Publish option.
2. Using a CSS Plugin
This method is one of the best as it gives you all the possibilities of the first method and much more. You can still use the WordPress Customizer to add CSS. Furthermore, this method allows you to add custom CSS to specific posts and pages. Using a CSS plugin ensures that your CSS is independent of your theme, so that updating the theme or switching it won’t affect the CSS.
a) On the sidebar of the admin dashboard, click on Add New under Plugins.
b) Search for the CSS plugin of your choice, such as Simple CSS. Install and activate it.
c) One of the ways to go about it is to go to the Customize option under Appearance.
d) You can then utilize the plugin option.
e) Add your custom CSS to the box.
f) The second option is to select the plugin option (Simple CSS in our case) under the Appearance option.
G) Add your custom CSS to the dark box.
H) The third option is to add custom CSS to a specific page or post. Below the post or at the bottom of the page, the plugin presents a box where you can enter the custom CSS.
3. Using the Stylesheet of your Child Theme
If you intend to make extensive CSS changes, you should seriously consider this method. In this method, you realize the importance of the child theme. If you attempt to put your custom CSS directly into your parent theme, you will lose the changes every time you make updates to the theme. However, if you use the child theme, updates to the parent theme will never affect your custom CSS.
Most good themes have a child theme. If yours has one, you’re ready to go. If not, you can easily install the One-Click Child Theme plugin. Once you have a child theme, you can proceed to the first step.
a) From the admin dashboard, click on the Child Theme option. WordPress will present you with a window on which to create a child theme.
b) Fill out the fields and finish the creation of the child theme as shown in the screenshot below.
c) The child theme will appear in the list of themes. Click on the Themes option below Appearance.
d) Click on the Customize option and edit the custom CSS for the child theme.
e) Alternatively, click on the Theme Editor option beneath Appearance. In this instance, WordPress will notify you if your code is okay before you move on.
Final Thoughts
With these sets of instructions on how to add custom CSS to a WordPress site, you can’t get lost. You don’t need to hire coding knowledge. You can now decide which one of the methods suits your preferences best. All of them have their advantages and downsides as we have explained. Make your choice and be prepared to have a fantastic website replicating your fertile imagination.
