How to Easily Add Custom CSS to Your WordPress Site

Adding CSS to your WordPress site is not that easy. If it were, you wouldn’t be reading this article. Sadly, this article cannot be a walking-talking FAQ or troubleshooting section for your specific website, but hopefully, this article will give you a few ideas on things you can try before you give up and change your WordPress theme.

Change Your WordPress Theme

Let’s start with the Omega option first. If all else fails, you can change your WordPress theme and find one that makes it easy to add all the CSS you want. If you have had your theme or website custom designed, then it should probably be your last option. Again, if you are already happy with your theme and all the tinkering you have done to it, then changing themes is probably the last thing you should do. However, as a last resort, you can change your theme and find one where the CSS tools work and/or where it is easy to add CSS. Your theme is often to blame for your difficulty, especially if you are not a coder by trade.

Use The Theme Customization Options

The previous tip was the “Last” thing you should do. Here is the first thing you should try. You should explore your WordPress theme to see if there is a tool that allows you to add CSS to your website. It is tricky finding it because different theme developers put it in different places, and some themes have very limited customization options. On your WordPress hub, go to “Appearance” and then look for “Customize” and search your theme’s options to find the CSS tool.

One of the biggest problems you will experience is that this doesn't work. You will add the CSS and nothing changes. Sometimes this is because the website's cache isn't showing you the changes, and sometimes it is because you haven’t entered the CSS correctly. However, in 90% of cases, the CSS tool doesn't work because that is what the developers wanted. It is often locked until you pay for the full version of the theme or until you pay the subscription. In other cases, the developers have tried to lock down how the theme operates to stop you doing too much tinkering (like trying to remove their footer name and link).

Use a Developer to Help You

This probably seems like it should be further down the list of things to try, but after you have tried customizing yourself, you should consider letting a developer take a look. Perhaps hold back if you have a massive website or a website that holds a lot of data. Nevertheless, there is this myth that developers are very expensive, which holds people back from using them. Whereas they are no more expensive than a car mechanic. If you go in to get your car tire changed, it doesn't cost as much as a new gearbox. If your website needs a bit of CSS tinkering, a developer like WP-Masters.com won’t charge you the same as if you wanted a new revamp and redesign.

Use a Plugin

WordPress is great for hundreds of reasons, especially now that Gutenberg has made it far easier to create dynamic websites. One of the greatest things about WordPress is just how darn popular it is. No matter what problem you have, there are hundreds of other people who have had the same problem. That is why, whenever you have a problem, there is almost always a plugin to help fix it.

For example, you may want to add Google AdSense to your website. It worked perfectly with the last WordPress theme you used, but suddenly you cannot add the header information and such. Go to the WordPress plugin marketplace and there are a bunch of plugins to help you put AdSense on your website. The same is true of the CSS problem. There are plugins that will allow you to add CSS to small portions of your website, and there are plugins that allow you to make global changes to your entire WordPress website. It is pretty darn awesome.

Adding CSS With The Full Site Editor

You can gain access to the code your WordPress uses, which means you can dig into the code and add the CSS manually yourself. This is both a good and bad idea. On the bad side, it is tricky to do (in some cases), and on the good side, there are often ways to achieve what you want without causing too much disruption.

The likes of websites like Rumble and YouTube are great for this sort of thing. Let’s say you want your titles on your posts to be centered and your theme won’t allow you to. Go to Rumble or YouTube and find a tutorial on how to add the correct CSS. Just like those people who show you how to fix your own tumble drier, you simply identify the troublesome area, make the tweak, and then leave. It is not like trying to add a card to a house of cards. It is more like replacing one Lego brick in your house with a different brick. Just be sure to make a backup of your website beforehand, and don't publish right away until you have taken a look at the previews of your website.