4. Confluence Docs 3.0 : Basic Styling Tutorial This page last changed on Dec 02, 2008 by edawson. This page contains instructions on how to get started with custom CSS styling in Confluence. On this page: CSS Editing Quick-Start Tutorial: Changing the Header Background CSS Editing Tips Begin With a Space Stylesheet Use the Right Tools Edit Simple Elements First RELATED LINKS ## CSS Editing Quick-Start Log in as the Space Administrator. Open the Space Admin page. Click 'Stylesheet'. Click 'Edit' to change the code in the text field. Paste your custom CSS into the text field. (Once text is saved here, you can make adjustments to it inline.) Click 'Save'. The new CSS will be visible on all content pages in the space. ## Tutorial: Changing the Header Background The header is the menu area at the top of a default Confluence page where the Breadcrumb Links, Browse menu, User menu and the Quick Search box reside. In this example, we are going to change the background of the header to include a custom graphic. Create a custom graphic. For this example, we created a custom header graphic of 1046 x 61 pixels. Upload the custom graphic to a page in the space that you are customising. Note the page ID of the page where you uploaded the new graphic. (in this example, the page ID was '658833839'. Compose your custom CSS for the header. The example below loads the new graphic (called 'header.png') from a specific page (denoted by page ID '658833839') in the same space.
        #header {
              background-image:url('../download/attachments/658833839/header.png');
              background-repeat: no-repeat;
           }
Log in as the Space Administrator. Open the Space Admin page. Click 'Stylesheet'. Click 'Edit' to change the code in the text field. Paste your custom CSS into the text field. Click 'Save'. Now reload the page (you may have to shift-reload). The background of the header will change. The custom header will be visible on all content pages in the space. To revert your change, simple delete the custom code from the 'Stylesheet' page and click 'Save'. ## CSS Editing Tips ##### Begin With a Space Stylesheet A space stylesheet is a good starting point for CSS customisation, as it already includes all of the elements that can be changed. When you work on the space stylesheet it styles all content pages in the space. Build and test it at space-level, before considering applying the new stylesheet to your entire site. Once you are satisfied with your space design, test it thoroughly until you are confident that it has no problems. Then, you can look into advanced customisation of the Confluence CSS such as adjusting the Search page, the Dashboard and other integral pages. ##### Use the Right Tools As the Confluence CSS is reasonably sophisticated, web development applications will help you to understand how the page styles have been created. In particular, you will need to view the existing source for the pages you're starting to work on. If you don't already have some, tools such as the following free applications will allow you to do this. 1. Firebug Firebug, a plugin for the Firefox web browser, allows you to take a look at the style of each element on your page. This is very useful to see what styles are currently applied, for example styles applied to the header only. 2. Web Developer The Web Developer plugin for Firefox allows you to edit CSS inline and create new page designs. 3. CSS Edit CSS Edit is a stand-alone CSS editor for Macintosh that extracts all existing styles from a given page and allows you to overwrite these. ##### Edit Simple Elements First Begin by editing simple elements and checking that they work. By making changes, then checking that each one worked, you can easily isolate any CSS code that is causing problems. Be aware that some page elements are more suited to customisation than others. For example, adding a gradient to the toolbar is less likely to 'break' the page than changing the page width. Editing reasonably static elements such as background graphics will render more predictably than designs which attempt to completely change the user interface or the Javascript-powered drop-down menus (which we don't recommend editing). ## RELATED LINKS Styling Confluence with CSS Styling Tabs in Confluence Including Cascading Stylesheets in Themes

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