Overview
If you’ve added CSS to your Feedspace widget but the styles aren’t taking effect, there are a few specific things to check. The most common cause is that the CSS is targeting a selector that the widget’s custom CSS panel doesn’t have access to, or that the toggle enabling custom CSS isn’t switched on.
Check 1: Make sure the custom CSS toggle is on
Click Widgets in the left sidebar, then click the pencil icon on your widget to open the editor. Go to the Design tab and scroll to the bottom. The Custom CSS toggle must be turned on before the CSS field appears. If it’s off, no CSS is applied regardless of what you’ve typed.
Check 2: Verify the CSS selector targets a card element
The custom CSS panel is scoped to the review card’s internal elements. It does not apply to the outer .feedspace-embed container or to your page layout around the widget. Selectors like .feedspace-embed { height: 500px; } will have no effect from inside the CSS panel.
Target card internals instead. The confirmed class for the review text is .feedspace-review-content. To find the class name for other elements (reviewer name, company, star rating), embed the widget on a test page and use your browser’s DevTools: right-click the element, select Inspect, and read the class from the HTML. Then target that class in the CSS panel.
Check 3: Check for CSS syntax errors
The CSS field does not validate your syntax before saving. A missing semicolon or an unclosed brace will silently break the entire rule. Double-check your CSS for:
- Every property ending with a semicolon:
font-size: 16px; - Opening and closing braces matching:
.class { ... } - No typographic quote characters: use straight quotes only in any string values
Check 4: CSS specificity conflict
The widget’s built-in styles may use more specific selectors than your rule. If a simple class selector like .feedspace-review-content { font-size: 14px; } isn’t overriding the default, add the parent widget container class to increase specificity. Use your browser DevTools to inspect the applied styles and see which rule is winning.
Check 5: The 1,500-character limit
The CSS field accepts up to 1,500 characters. If your CSS is longer than this, the field truncates it on save and the truncated portion is silently dropped. Keep your CSS compact: remove comments, whitespace, and any rules you don’t need.
What’s next
For CSS that needs to control the outer widget container (height, max-width, overflow), add those styles to your website’s stylesheet or inline style on the page rather than in the widget’s CSS panel. See How Do I Control the Height of My Feedspace Widget? for an example of how this is done.
Common questions
Will my CSS changes apply to the live embedded widget immediately after saving?
Yes. When you click Save and Next, the CSS is saved to the widget. The next time the page loads with your embed code, the new styles apply. Visitors on your site who already have the page cached may see the old styles until their cache clears. Do a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, Command+Shift+R on Mac) to see the change yourself.