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Cover image for How to make footer stick at the bottom of web page.
Nehal Ahmad
Nehal Ahmad

Posted on

How to make footer stick at the bottom of web page.

#html #css #webdev

Problem

If you are new to web development and have created some HTML page before then you may be in a situation where you find that your footer is not at the bottom of page and there is white space at the bottom because there is not much content.
image

here is simple html code that produce this result which is not we want.



<body>
    <header>
        <h1>This is Header.</h1>
    </header>

    <article>
        <h1>This is main content.</h1>
    </article>

    <footer>
        <h1>This is Footer.</h1>
    </footer>
</body>
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As you can see there are not much content so my footer is not in the bottom of the page. Technically it is bottom of the page but our page is not long enough.

Solution

Setting body height 



body {
    min-height: 100vh;
}
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We can set our body min height to 100vh that will make our page at least as long as screen height But it will not solve our problem.

Setting margin top on footer 



footer {
    margin-top: ???px;
}
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We can set margin-top on footer element that will make our footer to stay at the bottom of the page but when we have multiple pages and every page has different content length we have to set right amount of margin on every page one by one.

Using Flexbox

Using Flexbox in CSS we can fix it very easily with following steps.

  1. First set the min-height of body to 100vh. min-height: 100vh;.
  2. Set the body display to flex display: flex; and flex-direction to column flex-direction: column;.
  3. Select footer element (of whatever you want to stick to bottom) and set top margin to auto margin-top: auto;.

Your CSS should look something like this.



body{
    min-height: 100vh;
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
}
footer{
    margin-top: auto;
}
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And the problem should be fixed.
image

There is a great article on flexbox on css-trick.com to learn more about it. https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/

Bonus: Align content vertically center

When you don't have much content to fill the full height of screen like simple login form, you you may want to align your content vertically center.
To do this just remove margin top from footer and set margin top and bottom to auto margin: auto 0; on your main content (in my case article element) or margin: auto; to center it on both direction (vertically and horizontally) and it will make content align to center.

Your CSS should look something like this.



body{
    min-height: 100vh;
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
}
article {
    margin: auto 0;
}
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Top comments (27)

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ganymede profile image
Rudy Reeves • • Edited

I think flex-grow: 1; on the main content (the <article>) would achieve a similar result without margin and also allow the main content to fill the empty space

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iamludal profile image
Ludal 🚀 •

I often use this one, it seems more intuitive than having an automatic margin on the footer 🤔

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chakudi profile image
Vaishali JS •

I also used flex-grow to achieve this effect. Knowing about margin technique is new for me.

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naren67 profile image
naren67 •

grab that footer's class and do this
for example

.footer{
position:absolute;
bottom:0;
}

thats it

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bgrand_ch profile image
Benjamin Grand •

Nope, not the same.

With the example of this article, the footer is pushed to the bottom.

With your example, the footer is placed to the bottom, above all elements.

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eduardonwa profile image
Eduardo Cookie Lifter •

The footer placed above all elements, isn't that what we're still looking for? I mean it's still at the bottom of the page, unless it's on top of another element then yes, that's not what we want

Thread Thread
 
cpmech profile image
Dorival Pedroso •

I suppose the goal is to handle the cases: do we have more content that needs to push the footer down? is the screen big enough so the footer can stay at the bottom? I use grid for this reason. See the example from here css-tricks.com/the-holy-grail-layo... where you can see what happens to the footer when you expand Article.

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naren67 profile image
naren67 •

.footer{
position:fixed;
bottom:0;
}
a quick update use position fixed instead of absolute

Thread Thread
 
chrisokwakol profile image
Chris Okwakol •

footer {
position:relative;
bottom:0;
}

this worked for me.

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chaitanyavsh profile image
Chaitu Maverick •

This is the coolest one TBH. :)

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thecerealcoder profile image
Chris •

This could work, but I believe you would also need a margin-bottom the exact height of the footer element added to your page content, otherwise you run the risk of having the footer on top of things.

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naren67 profile image
naren67 •

yes,I mean position fixed would work better instead of position absolute

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dnjosh10 profile image
Dumte Nwidoobee Joshua •

This is the one I'm familiar with

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nehalahmadkhan profile image
Nehal Ahmad •

Benjamin Grand is right.

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cpmech profile image
Dorival Pedroso •

Good one!

I'd also suggest "display: grid".

For example:

    height: 100vh;
    display: grid;
    grid-template-areas:
      'warning'
      'header'
      'main'
      'footer';
    grid-template-columns: auto;
    grid-template-rows: auto auto 1fr auto;
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Where you can also get sticky header and more.

See Gist here: gist.github.com/cpmech/241857a5fe7...

Cheers.

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hamanel profile image
Manel •

I'm working with react and what worked for me is:

#root {
  min-height: 100vh;
  position: relative;
}

footer {
  position: absolute;
  bottom: 0;
}
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kaysi profile image
Kerrion •

Thanks for this. It definitely works with react.

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lewisingleton profile image
Lewis Ingleton •

This worked a treat for react

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abdul_samad_ba518dc1dc740 profile image
Abdul Samad • • Edited

You can also try this for #Footer, position (fixed) is for not moving & stuck where you do, and viewport width(vw) is the view of your screen that we use, 100vw for 100% view of your screen area. 

position: fixed;
bottom: 0;
width: 100vw;
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naren67 profile image
naren67 •

Dont forget to use the position fixed property to fix that divison at the bottom of the page

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mukhtaaraziz profile image
MukhtaarAziz •

Thank you, great article

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lisichaviano profile image
Lisandra •

Amazing! Thanks!

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sbouwnsv profile image
Sukhman •

thank you for sharing

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akhilalekha profile image
Akhila •

This helped me. Thank youu <3

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