Divide an article into several divisions by adding <div> tags

Question

I am new to Joomla and I want to develop an article in joomla with several divisions in it like we dividing a normal HTML page by adding tags. I tried to add some CSS code to the article with the help of sourcerer, but it didn't work. Need a better solution than this. I also tried with the Add custom css extension of joomla, but no progress. Following images are the CSS file and the article code of joomla.

CSS file

Joomla article code

Output

Answer 1

You can place all of your custom css definitions in yourjoomla/templates/yourtemplate/css folder if you create a custom.css or user.css file in this folder. Since this does not always work with every templates, then you can use a free plugin to load your custom css codes/style:

https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/add-custom-css/

This way you can reuse your 'special' div class styles in other articles too and you do not have to define div styles article by article...

And I really forgot to mention that you need to use for example CodeMirror editor in your Joomla and you can edit the articles in full html mode in that case, which you can set at Global configuration->Default Editor->Editor-CodeMirror . And that way together with the above styling solution or with inline styling you can create any kind of html pages/articles. (I am sorry for leaving out this important part from my answer earlier).

Very important in using this css loading plugin: you have to put this plugin at the end of the plugin order in the Plug-in Manager.

Results of my test of the above:

My article html:

<div class="col">
  <div class="coll_1">
    <p>
      This is col 1
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="coll_2">
    <p>
      This is col 2
    </p>
  </div>
</div>

my short css in custom.css file:

.coll_1 {
  width: 100px;
  height: 50px;
  background-color: red;
}

.coll_2 {
  width: 200px;
  height:50px;
  background-color: blue;
}

And my visual result in the article in Joomla frontend:

So it works without a problem.

But making the whole subject much more simple: if you use CodeMirror as your default editor in Joomla, then you actually do not need the Add Custom CSS Plugin for styling your articles. Using CodeMirror editor, you can just place your inline css style within <style> tags in the article, save the article, and you will have the same result (a styled article), so just paste the whole thing in one in the article and you will have that.

So then your article should just look like this:

<div class="col">
  <div class="coll_1">
    <p>
      This is col 1
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="coll_2">
    <p>
      This is col 2
    </p>
  </div>
</div>

<style>
.coll_1 {
  width: 100px;
  height: 50px;
  background-color: red;
}

.coll_2 {
  width: 200px;
  height:50px;
  background-color: blue;
}
</style>

And finally: you can even import/load bootstrap inline with using CodeMirror Editor in Joomla if it's not loaded in default in your page. You can load bootstrap in an 'empty' module if it's not loaded and you can use bootstrap styling too as you want. I mostly use uikit library in layouts and styling.

So if you just copy and paste this code in your article you get 3 columns divs in the article, using bootstrap (this is just an example, not how you should load bootstrap for long term):

<div class="col">
  <div class="coll_1">
    <p>
      This is row1 1
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="coll_2">
    <p>
      This is row2 2
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="coll_3">
    <p>
      This is row 3
    </p>
  </div>
</div>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.0.0/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-Gn5384xqQ1aoWXA+058RXPxPg6fy4IWvTNh0E263XmFcJlSAwiGgFAW/dAiS6JXm" crossorigin="anonymous">

<div class="container-fluid">
   <div class="row">
    <div class="col-sm">
      One of three columns
    </div>
    <div class="col-sm">
      Second of three columns
    </div>
    <div class="col-sm">
      Third of three columns
    </div>
  </div>
</div>


<style>
.coll_1 {
  width: 100px;
  height: 50px;
  background-color: red;
}

.coll_2 {
  width: 200px;
  height:50px;
  background-color: blue;
}

.coll_3 {
  width: 100px;
  height: 50px;
  }
</style> 

and the result with using Bootstrap where you can see the 3 columns division:

So you can do endless things using CodeMirror editor in Joomla.

Answer 2

Since this question has been written there are simpler options for inserting columns into content that do not require writing the HTML or CSS code yourself such as:

1. the free N1ED TinyMCE Plugin

2. the columns feature of the Professional version of JCE Editor

The nice thing about using these tools is that the columns are WYSIWYG in the back-end of the website which makes the styling more obvious when you (or someone else) edits the content later.