Getting Started with WordPress and CSS

WordPress relies heavily on the presentation styles within CSS. With the use of Themes, you have an almost infinite choice of layout options. WordPress Themes make it easy to change your website look, and open up the field to help you create your own Theme and page layout.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It allows you to store style presentation information (like colors and layout) separate from your HTML structure. This allows precision control of your website layout and makes your pages faster and easier to update.

This article briefly describes the use of CSS in WordPress, and lists some references for further information. For information on CSS itself, see Know Your Sources.

WordPress and CSS

WordPress Themes use a combination of template files, template tags, and CSS files to generate your WordPress site’s look.

Template Files
Template files are the building blocks which come together to create your site. In the WordPress Theme structure, the header, sidebar, content, and footer are all contained within individual files. They join together to create your page. This allows you to customize the building blocks. For example, in the default WordPress Theme, the multi-post view found on the front page, category, archives, and search web pages on your site, the sidebar is present. Click on any post, you will be taken to the single post view and the sidebar will now be gone. You can choose which parts and pieces appear on your page, and customize them individually, allowing for a different header or sidebar to appear on all pages within a specific category. And more. For a more extensive introduction to Templates, see Stepping Into Templates.
Template Tags
Template tags are the bits of code which provide instructions and requests for information stored within the WordPress database. Some of these are highly configurable, allowing you to customize the date, time, lists, and other elements displayed on your website. You can learn more about template tags in Stepping Into Template Tags.
Stylesheet
The CSS file is where it all comes together. On every template file within your site there are HTML elements wrapped around your template tags and content. In the stylesheet within each Theme are rules to control the design and layout of each HTML element. Without these instructions, your page would simply look like a long typed page. With these instructions, you can move the building block structures around, making your header very long and filled with graphics or photographs, or simple and narrow. Your site can “float” in the middle of the viewer’s screen with space on the left and right, or stretch across the screen, filling the whole page. Your sidebar can be on the right or left, or even start midway down the page. How you style your page is up to you. But the instructions for styling are found in the style.css file within each Theme folder.

WordPress Generated Classes

Several classes for aligning images and block elements (div, p, table etc.) were introduced in WordPress 2.5: aligncenter,alignleft and alignright. In addition the class alignnone is added to images that are not aligned, so they can be styled differently if needed.

The same classes are used to align images that have a caption (as of WordPress 2.6). Three additional CSS classes are needed for the captions, together the alignment and caption classes are:

[css]
/* =WordPress Core
————————————————————– */
.alignnone {
margin: 5px 20px 20px 0;
}

.aligncenter,
div.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin: 5px auto 5px auto;
}

.alignright {
float:right;
margin: 5px 0 20px 20px;
}

.alignleft {
float: left;
margin: 5px 20px 20px 0;
}

.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin: 5px auto 5px auto;
}

a img.alignright {
float: right;
margin: 5px 0 20px 20px;
}

a img.alignnone {
margin: 5px 20px 20px 0;
}

a img.alignleft {
float: left;
margin: 5px 20px 20px 0;
}

a img.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto
}

.wp-caption {
background: #fff;
border: 1px solid #f0f0f0;
max-width: 96%; /* Image does not overflow the content area */
padding: 5px 3px 10px;
text-align: center;
}

.wp-caption.alignnone {
margin: 5px 20px 20px 0;
}

.wp-caption.alignleft {
margin: 5px 20px 20px 0;
}

.wp-caption.alignright {
margin: 5px 0 20px 20px;
}

.wp-caption img {
border: 0 none;
height: auto;
margin: 0;
max-width: 98.5%;
padding: 0;
width: auto;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 17px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0 4px 5px;
}
[/css]

Each Theme should have these or similar styles in its style.css file to be able to display images and captions properly. The exact HTML elements and class and ID values will depend on the structure of the Theme you are using.

Templates and CSS

To help you understand more about how CSS works in relationship to your web page, you may wish to read some of the articles cited in these lists:

  • Using Themes – There are also many advanced articles in this list.
  • Templates – Comprehensive list of WordPress Theme and Template articles.
  • Theme Development – WordPress Theme Development guide and code standards.

WordPress Layout Help

If you are having some problems or questions about your WordPress Theme or layout, begin by checking the website of the Theme author to see if there is an upgrade or whether there are answers to your questions. Here are some other resources:

CSS Resources