CSS (Cascading Styling Sheet) is a useful method of defining styling across your website, which speeds up your pageload, it creates common styling across pages, and makes it easier to create new pages.
Let’s examine what CSS is and how it can improve your website.
What is CSS?
CSS is a file within your website, usually your Root Directory or in case of WordPress within your Theme’s directory.
It defines common styling, as it says in the name, and works exactly as the name suggests, as it applies styling across the website.
Why is CSS important?
CSS is an important part of your website design, as it delivers uniformity of design. It also makes life easier for maintaining your website such as adding new pages, or changing the styling.
Without CSS you have to define elements of your design on every page, including font, colour, size, margins, padding, etc.
What does CSS do?
Within CSS you can define many parameters, which means you do not have to do this “inline” on every page and for every element of your website.
Inline commands, are commands within the page where you can define styling of each “line” of text, image, or any item contained within that line.
For example you can set the following parameters in CSS:
- Font – You can set the type, colour, and size of your main body text
- H-Series Headers – You can set the type, colours, and size of your headers (H-Series) and even define % ratios. For example H2 is 80% of H1, and H3 is 70% of H1, etc.
- Links – You can define the colour and font of text links within your text body, instead of the HTML default blue for links!
- Elements – You can set the styling of elements within your design such as the Navigation Bar, Footer, Borders, Buttons, Margins, Padding, etc. This can be done even if you are using page builders such as Elementor or WP Bakery.
- Theme Settings – You can override the WordPress Theme design parameters by overriding or changing the Theme’s definitions.
- This is not the complete list as you can define many other parameters
What are the benefits of CSS?
There are numerous benefits of using CSS including:
- Time Saving – When creating new pages, you do not have to define elements that have already been defined within the CSS, making it quicker to create new pages that have the same styling as the rest of your website.
- Loading Speed – As your pages do not have inline HTML code to define elements, pages load faster and carry less payload.
- Uniformity – Your web pages will have a uniform formats such as text, colour, padding, margins, etc. giving the website a more professional feel.
- Changes – You can quickly change styling. For example if you want to change the font on your website, you can simply make that change in your CSS file and not on every page.
- Override – You can override CSS if you want certain elements to behave differently to the CSS by using inline HTML code on specific pages.
Is CSS easy to implement?
Like everything, it is easy if you know how. CSS is easy if you have plenty of practice, which is one of the tell-tell signs of a website that has been designed by professional vs self-made ones.
You can get a lot of good information and guidance on “CSS Tutorial Website”, but it is important to understand that you need to identify the Elements within your website, or theme, before you can create CSS definition for them. This means you need to understand the design elements of your website (or theme in case of WordPress), so that you can define them. To do this, you need to be able to view the code and decipher where CSS is applied.
Summary
CSS is a very powerful tool for creating uniformity of design across your website. CSS improves pageload time and makes life easier for when you add new pages to your website.
CSS is the difference between a professionally designed website and a Do-It-Yourself website done on the cheap.
CSS is a tool used by professionals who can create impactful websites with attention to detail. Contact us if you need a professionally created website.