There are several ways to make a footer stick to the bottom of a page using CSS. But until now, they've used long and messy hacks or a lot of extra HTML markup; this method uses only 15 lines of CSS and hardly any HTML markup. Even better, it's completely valid CSS, and it works in all major browsers.
How to use this footer on your website
Add the following lines of CSS to your stylesheet. The negative value for the margin in .wrapper is the same number as the height of .footer and .push. The negative margin should always equal to the full height of the footer (including any padding or borders you may add).
* {
margin: 0;
}
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
.wrapper {
min-height: 100%;
height: auto !important;
height: 100%;
margin: 0 auto -4em;
}
.footer, .push {
height: 4em;
}
Follow this HTML structure. No content can be outside of the .wrapper and .footer div tags unless it is absolutely positioned with CSS.
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="layout.css" ... />
</head>
<body>
<div class="wrapper">
<p>Your website content here.</p>
<div class="push"></div>
</div>
<div class="footer">
<p>Copyright (c) 2008</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Troubleshooting
The footer works fine without height: auto !important; and height: 100%; in the wrapper selector. This is a min-height hack for IE, so if you want the footer to stick to the bottom of the page in Internet Explorer 6, don't remove it!
Adding margins to elements is messing up the footer. Simply use padding instead, and all your worries will go away.
