Hello, I’m having another go at learning code. I’m an SEO Executive but have been coding quite a few of our SEO-related pages in my day job.

Plan is to do courses on Udemy, then create a blog post about them and do an example. I’ll probably have to do the example on Codepen as I can’t embed code in the free WP blog.

CSS selectors, are used in CSS style sheets to determine what styles to apply to what HTML elements.

In Line CSS (bit chavvy)

You can apply CSS inline – i.e. just add it onto an HTML element


e.g. <H1 style = "margin-bottom 0px;"

CSS in Script Tags

You can add it, somewhere on the HTML doc within <style> </style> tags

<html>
<head>
<style>
  h1 {color:red;}
  p {color:blue;}
</style>
</head>

CSS in an external Style Sheet

Usually the best solution, is to create a separate Style Sheet

To do this you need a line of code (or markup) linking the HTML doc to the CSS sheet.

For example, if you save and name your stylesheet as styles.css:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
</head>

Best practice is to put all your styles in a separate stylesheet. Dunno why, just go with it for now.

If you put your CSS in script tags, or in a stylesheet, you’ll need to use Bo selectors.

Imagine you’re a parent.
HTML elements are your kids
The CSS style sheet are the instructions you’re giving to the baby-sitter on how to look after your kids.

Great analogy, I know.

You can be an overprotective, bit of a bellend of a parent and use inline CSS to give you micro-management and control over your kids, but you generally don’t want to do that.

Types of CSS Selectors

ID & Class selectors are the most commonly used. Class selectors for sure. But I’ve listed class selectors second, just to be annoying.

ID selectors

- Id selectors use a hashtag, like Twitter but it’s not full of political wankers and Chinese bots – #
- Use these selectors sparingly, class selectors usually work better/are preferred.
- If you run the codepen below, hopefully you’ll see that I’ve selected only the first ID, and made it blue

- ID selectors are specific and therefore override more general selectors

Class Selectors

The most commonly used type of selector
very versatile
Well supported in most browsers – probably all browsers except for like IE 6
You can add multiple classes to an HTML element, so you can style it multiple ways with a class selector
If you run the pen below, you should see the first class coloured pink

Tag Selectors

HTML tags like <h1> and <p> can be targeted directly with tag selectors
Tag selectors are sometimes used to unset styles that browsers set by default
Tag selectors are not so popular. Stick with class selectors if possible.
Just type the name of the tag e.g. H2 and then open curly brackets, add style and close brackets