Managing CSS files in Sitecore

This article shows how you can manage CSS files in Sitecore. This is one of those techniques that I don't exactly recommend as it shouldn't really be needed, but sometimes it can be a compromise to allow front-end designers to modify CSS on the fly. One of the advantages of doing this is that having Sitecore drive your CSS means your CSS can also follow the restricted publication process allowing your CSS to change depending on the date. I was working on a site that had a "deal of the day" where each day had a different offer and that offer was reflected on the home page. This technique allowed the designer to version the home page for each day, and also version the css tweaks for each day and set up the site for the whole week in advance. On each morning we simply did a publish and the publish restrictions we'd set up on the versions meant the homepage and css reflected that day's deal.

Note that the css for the majority of the site was still handled in css files, the css that we made driven from Sitecore contained only slight modifications the designer wanted so that buttons looked different, fonts for some components were different and so on.