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Styling guidelines

It is important for end-users to have quick and responsive websites. This improves your business metrics, such as engagement, retention, and conversion. Using fast and reliable CSS contributes to creating appealing sites.


In this article, you will learn essential practices to help you create fast websites. Additionally, you will learn about patterns that negatively affect the speed of your sites. These patterns and practices are generic and you can use them everywhere.

RECOMMENDATION: We recommend getting familiar with the documentation of the Bootstrap theming guide before starting work on your theme. For more information, see Theming Bootstrap on the Bootstrap site.

Good CSS practices

We recommend following these practices when creating your Sitefinity CMS websites.

  • Create reusable styles with CSS classes.
  • Use shorthand properties where possible.
  • Use a CSS reset stylesheet.
  • Make your CSS readable, add comments, and validate it.
  • Use a CSS preprocessor.
  • Compress the CSS for production.

CSS practices to avoid

The following CSS code patterns may impact your sites negatively. We recommend using the provided alternatives instead.

IMPORTANT: These CSS patterns may result in CSS leaking in the New content editor.

  • Do not use !important rules, especially on element type selectors.
  • Do not use type selector, ID selector, or combinators (>, +, ~).
  • Do not use selectors with higher specificity and do not use unnecessary selectors.
  • Do not mix tag names with ID or class name.
  • Do not declare the same CSS rule repeatedly.
  • Do not use the same selector repetitively.
  • Avoid using inline styles.

Increase your Sitefinity skills by signing up for our free trainings. Get Sitefinity-certified at Progress Education Community to boost your credentials.

Web Security for Sitefinity Administrators

The free standalone Web Security lesson teaches administrators how to protect your websites and Sitefinity instance from external threats. Learn to configure HTTPS, SSL, allow lists for trusted sites, and cookie security, among others.

Foundations of Sitefinity ASP.NET Core Development

The free on-demand video course teaches developers how to use Sitefinity .NET Core and leverage its decoupled architecture and new way of coding against the platform.

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