Archived topic
Feature Suggestion: Export Customizer CSS
5 replies · Started by Daniel on June 10, 2017
Hi Tom,
Just a little feature idea to run past you.
Having spent many years hacking at theme CSS and writing themes/child themes I find the customizer something of a mixed blessing.
I love sitting tinkering and seeing instant results, but at the end of it I find myself wanting to export the CSS so I can plant it in the child theme style.css
That would be such an awesome feature...
Dan
Hi Dan,
So you're wanting to build out your options in the Customizer, then export the resulting CSS (at least the options that build CSS) so it can be added to your child theme?
That's the idea...
There are many advantages to putting the CSS in a child theme rather than inline (Customizer style) and this method is really appealing from an agency point of view.
You could say don't be lazy and just do it all in a child theme anyway and don't touch the Customizer, but your implementation is so good it's a shame not to use it!
Dan
I'm definitely exploring some avenues with this.
I honestly just like using Autoptimize for this. It grabs the inline CSS and puts it into a file for you.
I realise you can use Autoptimize to combine all CSS including inline and I'm a huge fan of that plugin too.
I think my purpose is slightly different, and perhaps lazy...
When starting a new site, I find myself playing in the Customizer and getting it as close as possible then hopping over to a text editor and adding custom styles to the style.css (preferred to the Custom CSS box in Customizer)
This way you end up with a weird patchwork of a lot of important CSS defined in the Customizer and 'trapped' in Wordpress and the rest in style.css whereas it would be neat to be able to export it all out to allow easy CSS extending and lack of repetition.
Dan
That seems like the opposite of lazy. Why not just let the Customizer write the CSS for you? Maybe I'm misunderstanding?
