We’ve made a small change to the Custom CSS upgrade, that should help some of you who have been playing with the feature. Before, if you were using any theme except Sandbox, your custom CSS would be added to th existing styles of the theme.
This meant you’d have to override every color, positioning, etc that was already in the theme, which could be a real pain.
Well no longer, now on your CSS screen you can specify whether to add your code to the existing CSS or to just use yours.
To celebrate this change, and the end of the year, we’ve discounted the Custom CSS upgrade by $5 until the end of the year, so until January 1st you can upgrade for just 10/year.
Just a reminder, this upgrade is best for people who know or want to learn CSS code, if code frustrates you this upgrade probably isn’t a good fit.
WordPress.com News 
Awesome! 😀
Can anyone tell me why I should to upgrade to custom CSS?
Now, that seems nice .. though much more things can be done !!
Cool ..
Stupid question, can I change the features of the blog within CSS? For example, if the theme I use doesn’t display the author of the post is that something I can change if I upgrade? Thanks!
It’s worth getting. You can check out my blog to get an idea of what you can do with it.
Well worth the money.
Buena idea!It’s good!!
Is there a place where we can download the default CSS file from WordPress.com for each theme and then edit and then cut and paste in our own changes from that file?
Is the discount retroactive for those who already paid full price? SMILE!
David, sorry the discount isn’t retroactive, it’s a limited one-time offer just for the new year. There should be a link from the Custom CSS page to whatever your current CSS file is, so you’re welcome to copy and paste from there.
If anyone is interested in some tools for helping out CSS development, including finding out which classes and styles are applying to current elements on a page, I would highly recommend checking out the free Firefox extension called Firebug.
great!
I also wanna buy this upgrade.
TheShortFatKid, nope things like the author are in the HTML. CSS is only good for styling things that are already there.
AndreasNB, sure! If you’re a more advanced user who is comfortable with writing and editing CSS code, custom CSS can allow you to make your blog look like anything you can imagine, only limited by your skills and the existing HTML of our 50+ themes. However if you’re not sure how or if the CSS upgrade would benefit you, it’s probably not a good idea.
We’re adding more customization features all the time to allow for most types of custsomization people request to be easy to do without knowing any code. A good example of this is the custom header feature on most themes.
Hmm.. nice. But code confuses me. I’d better stick with the themes and get this upgrade WHEN I learn CSS. 🙂
P.S. Thanks for the Super-uber fast Dashboard! [yeah i’m a 56k’er!]
Yep, that’s the best way. Don’t forget though, you can preview and play with the tool all you want, if you want to experiment with CSS, but just to make it public to the world do you need to upgrade.
This is surely a sweet offer. And I’m glad to hear you remind bloggers they can play around with css customization, without effecting their blog from the viewers’ standpoint, until the theme suits them to a “T”, and they are ready to upgrade. The opportunity to get into css customization in a two stage way removes stress and, is actually a feature in itself. To be getting this feature at the reduced price is a nice New Year gift. Thanks for all you do all year round for us bloggers Matt. WordPress is the best! 😀
you guys rule!! thanks!
something i’d love to see in the future is to have more link widgets which would allow more flexibility in viewing. currently they are in one single block and often i wish i could break them apart. thanks santa!
Thanks Matt,
Whenever I manage to get up the “courage” to experiment with CSS, I’ll certainly take advantage of this great upgrade. Again, Matt, thanks again for your hard work. I agree with Timethief: WordPress is definitely the best!
All I need to do now is learn CSS !
Have we got some more new themes coming up ?
Nice work!
But we need to buy 15 credits anyway!! 😀
Thanks! Will upgrade soon.
perfect!
Matt, thanks for the quick response and thanks for making WP.com so dang awesome!
Hmm, I might just spend some of my Xmas money on upgrading my custom CSS blog to use custom CSS…
I upgraded a while ago thinking I could teach myself CSS but that just hasn’t happened 🙂 I would love to find someone willing to help me customize my site! I’m not ready to move from wordpress.com but I would definitely like to change things up a bit!
It not only doesn’t work for me but it totally messed up my blog.
Matt, Its good, but I think its better let all users or old users to use custom CSS in their blog. I couldn’t upgrade & also couldn’t pay any cent! because I live in Iran!
Matt, could you give this chance (custom CSS) for old users?! 🙂
Thanks 😉
Matt, I upgraded my other WP blog thinking I could use the upgrade on both my WP blogs. That doesn’t seem to be the case — or am I doing something wrong?
well i did upgraded its and now i guess i learn alot of things in the css 🙂 its fun to learn
What about images? If I upgrade can I upload images and use those from my CSS? That would be great 🙂
As usual WP comes up with greatness at the cost of a bag of peanuts. You guys (and WP gals?) are superb!
I have learned it is not possible to customise the templates (except the image header) because all the WordPress blogs are sharing the same templates. Only way to get around it, I was told, was to host the blog myself and download the WordPress blogging software.
So now I am a bit confused. Whith the CSS custom upgrade, it is possible to edit one’s existing template after all?
Timethief; it sounds really great with the two stages option. Nice to know, thank you for the information.
for you kids just getting started with CSS, the best tool I know about is to pair the firefox browser with the editcss.xpi plugin. This combination allows you to try out css changes on-the-fly, without risking damage to the “live” design of your theme.
get firefox here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
after you’re running firefox, get the editcss xpi here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/179/
and a great css resource for designers can be found in the articles at A List Apart:
happy cssing…
hey! tekel for the tips i did goes and check out..its great 🙂