WordPress has done a fantastic job of streamlining the site-building process for the mainstream. And that’s not to say WordPress is a host for amateurs, because WP hosts a ton of big-name brands. According to statistical data, approximately 35% of sites are powered by WordPress. But one of the main appeals of WordPress is that any person with a little average know-how can set up a reasonably decent looking website, it all depends on how much time you’re willing to invest.
Should you learn CSS to manage a WordPress blog?
That should be the real question of this article. You don’t need CSS knowledge to manage a WordPress blog, not at all. But due to the nature of website building, and how prone to creep scope website projects can be, you’ll probably end up learning CSS of your own volition along the way.
What I mean by “creep scope” is that as you build your own WordPress blog, you’ll eventually experience the desire to customize and enhance it beyond what the easily clickable tools can offer. So you start learning a little bit of WordPress custom CSS to do what you want, and it keeps going from there, and so just by starting a WordPress site you’ve stumbled into the proverbial CSS rabbit-hole.
Another thing is that because WordPress is such a popular mainstream host, it’s very easy to spot the generic “made in WordPress” layout that you really can’t escape without buying custom themes, and even then you’ll want to know a bit of CSS to tailor it for your website.
Having an obviously generic “made in WordPress” theme can kind of hurt you, depending on your industry. There are certainly some making-ends-meet Podcasters and ebook sellers skating by on generic WordPress layouts, but that’s niche content stuff.
In this article, we’re going to go over some basic tasks in WordPress that site owners will invariably perform at some time or another, and whether or not they require any CSS knowledge. After reading this article, you can check out some CSS courses for a deeper understanding of how all this works.
Tasks that don’t require CSS knowledge
In WordPress, you can do all of the following tasks without any CSS knowledge whatsoever:
Adding posts and images: WordPress has a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) post editor, which makes creating blog entries as easy as updating your Facebook status, with additional buttons of inserting images, changing the font, etc.
Modify your site’s layout and theme: WordPress has a lot of 1-click install themes to change the layout and outlook of your website. It’s also easy to change simple things like your site banner and menu layout.
Create a store: With various plugins such as the free WooCommerce, it’s really easy to set up a store page and start selling online.
Tasks that may require some CSS knowledge
These tasks won’t require any significant CSS knowledge, but you may need to learn a thing or two.
Customizing small aspects of your site theme: For simple, sitewide theme changes such as changing all Header 2 text to orange, you just need a few very basic CSS codes. You could copy-paste them from CSS tutorial websites, like this:
h2 { color: #e38b19; }
And you can do it directly in the WordPress Customizer, without installing any additional plugins.
Using a simple CSS plugin: For adding more CSS without needing to go into WordPress stylesheets, you could install a streamlined CSS editor. Something like Simple CSS does the job for most people, as it offers a real-time preview of your CSS code.
Alternatively, you could install a front-end CSS editor like Visual CSS Style Editor, which gives you buttons and sliders to change CSS code without any actual coding necessary.
Tasks that require CSS knowledge
These tasks require perhaps not only CSS knowledge but a more thorough understanding of WordPress back end. For this type of tasks, you might need to hire a professional development from companies like Soshace.
Creating or massively editing themes: You only need to copy-paste some CSS code to change your header colors, as we mentioned previously. However, for creating themes from the ground-up, or doing significant changes to a downloaded theme such as adding customized menus and grid layouts, you absolutely require CSS knowledge.
This is because you’ll be working inside WordPress style.css file which controls the nitty-gritty details of your site’s theme. And if the .css file extension didn’t give it away, the style.css file is written entirely in CSS (imagine that).
In any case, CSS is used to create those really sleek, professional-looking sites that capture everyone’s attention. Surely you want that?
