A Cleaner CSS file for DotNetNuke Framework

Often I see people asking about how to design a web site and implement it using DotNetNuke framework while maintaining the integrity of the design. The answer I have is to start with a cleaner CSS file. As we know the team at DotNetNuke has their reasons for keeping the default.css file intact, it does not mean that it prevents you from making changes to the file yourself.

I always start with a project using my very own version of this file. Since the last release of version 4.x, I cleaned up the file and use it across many sites for both client and personal work. If you’d to see how it looks, feel free to download it here (please login if you're already a registered user, if not, go ahead and create an account) and throw it in your testing environment to replace the current one that you have. You’ll be in complete control of your design, I promise.

This file resets many of the CSS properties and its values that should be defined by a web designer. By comparing the old file with this cleaned up version, you’ll see a big change in file size.

One things to consider is that you need to define styles for some generic elements such as td, th, span, div… in your own CSS (skin.css) to achieve the desire look and feel.

For those of you don’t know where the location of the file is, here’s the path: http://www.domain.com/Portals/_default/default.css

So grab the file and go create some kick-ass DotNetNuke design!