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Guide to cPanel Interface Customization - The styles.css File

Introduction

The styles.css file contains the CSS for each cPanel style. After you create the styles.css file, use your preferred text editor to update it.

You must use styles.css as the name of your custom CSS file.

• You can also supply the styles.min.css file. We strongly recommend that you include both the styles.css and styles.min.css files.
• If you use another name for your CSS file, the system will not apply the CSS to the cPanel interface.
• The cPanel interface uses Twitter Bootstrap as its base framework, with a base stylesheet to override some Twitter Bootstrap rules. For more information about Twitter Bootstrap, read the Twitter Bootstrap documentation.

Commonly-customized elements

The diagrams below label some of the elements that you can use to style your theme, and where they apply to the cPanel interface. To easily find additional classes for specific parts of the cPanel interface, we recommend that you use your browser to inspect that portion of the interface (for example, in Google Chrome™, use the Inspect Element feature.

Common styles.css items

Change button styles

By default, the cPanel interface customizes the appearance of buttons. To return your custom style's buttons to the default Bootstrap buttons, add the following code to your styles.css file:

.btn {
    border-bottom:0;
    box-shadow: none;
}

.btn-primary {
    position: relative;
    vertical-align: top;
    color: #FFFFFF;
    text-align: center;
    cursor: pointer;
}

.btn-default {
    color: #333;
    background-color: #fff;
    border-color: #ccc;
}

You can also customize this code in your styles.css file to add your own customizations.

Target a specific screen size for certain CSS rules

Use @media queries to target your style's content for a specific screen size. These statements create conditional CSS rules that the system only applies when the screen that you use to view the cPanel interface matches certain criteria. The @media statement defines the conditions under which the system applies the nested rules.

For example, you can use the following rule to hide the quick links navigation bar when the width of the screen is less than 768 pixels:

@media (max-width: 767px) {
    .navbar-subnav {
        display: none;
    }
    body {
        background:pink;
    }
}

For more information about @media queries, read the Bootstrap documentation.

Refer to another asset in the styles.css file

After you apply a style, the system generates the current_style symlink in the style directory. The current_style symlink always points to the active style that the user selected in cPanel's Change Style interface (Home >> Preferences >> Change Style). If you use the /styled/current_style path to link external styles in your styles.css file, the cpsrvd daemon queries the current style for those assets.

For example, to add a background image to your cPanel dashboard that links to your current style, include the following CSS statement in the styles.css file:

body {
   background-image:url("/styled/current_style/image.png");
}

Target specific cPanel or Webmail interfaces

You can use appkey values to target specific cPanel or Webmail interfaces in your custom CSS files.

• To target an existing interface, find the appropriate appkey in our Guide to cPanel Interface Customization - Appkeys documentation.
• To target a custom interface in a cPanel plugin, use the application's file value in the dynamicui.conf file (the icon value in the plugin's install.json file).

For example, to change the color of the headers in cPanel's Site Publisher interface (Home >> Domains >> Site Publisher) only, without affecting any other headers, add the following lines to the styles.css file:

#site_publisher h1,
#site_publisher h2
{ color: red; }

Target a specific application

You can use classes to target a specific application in your custom CSS files.

• To target cPanel interfaces, use the cpanel class.
• To target Webmail interfaces, use the webmail class.

For example, to change the color of the headers in Webmail interfaces only, without affecting any other headers, add the following lines to the styles.css file:

.webmail {
    background-color: red;
}

Load multiple stylesheets

You may experience increased load times if you load multiple stylesheets.

Use the @import CSS rule to load multiple stylesheets into your styled directory:

@import url("/styled/current_style/another_style.css");

RTL languages

For languages that read right-to-left, use the following code as an example of how to switch text alignment within a custom style:

html[dir="rtl"] h1, html[dir="rtl"] .h1 {
    text-align:right;
}