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CSS How to Make a Website CSS: Cascading Style Sheets Use ID Selectors

Posted by iris zhang
iris zhang
Courses Plus Student 1,520 Points

external css style sheet doesn't work

So I have put the main.css inside of my css folder and added the link in my index.html, like this "<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css">". However, it just doesn't do anything like the CSS style sheet is not there.

2 Answers

Yan Kozlovskiy
PLUS
Yan Kozlovskiy
Courses Plus Student 13,773 Points
Yan Kozlovskiy
Yan Kozlovskiy
Courses Plus Student 13,773 Points

Well, that's not how you'd add a link. By putting " " you're essentially linking it to nowhere. This is how you'd make a proper external link:

relative link: the/path/to/stylesheet.css you use relative links to find files uploaded on your server

absolute link: http://www.wehavestylesheets.com/external/stylesheets/stylesheet.css you use absolute links to find files on other servers

I'd recommend always using relative links, in case the site you're linking it to goes down.

Here's a visual representation of the difference between absolute and relative:

Absolute = ADDRESS OF WEBSITE + "THE RELATIVE" LOCATION

http://www.wehavestylesheets.com/.com/content/to/be/found

Relative = JUST "THE RELATIVE" LOCATION

linking/to/a/file/in/my/server.css

iris zhang
iris zhang
Courses Plus Student 1,520 Points

Thanks. I understand what you are saying. But I am doing it in the workspace and I have everything under the workspace directory. Somehow it works right now. I didn't change anything. Maybe it is a problem with workspace. Anyway, thank you.

Stacy Fabian
Stacy Fabian
2,246 Points
Stacy Fabian
Stacy Fabian
2,246 Points

Hey Iris,

So you would put in something like this...

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css">

That's assuming you named your css sheet "main.css".

Or if you were trying to link to the "responsive.css" sheet (you might not be there in the lesson yet), you'd do...

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/responsive.css">

Basically, you have to tell it where to link to by typing out the name of your css sheet.

Does that help?

Stacy