Adding css to magento 1.8.1

Question

I'm trying to add a custom CSS file when a Magento action is loaded.

My layout page is as follows :

<layout version="0.1.0">

<helloworld_index_index>
  <reference name="head">

        <action method="addCss">
            <stylesheet>css/custom.css</stylesheet>
        </action>
    </reference>
       <reference name="root">
         <block type="page/html" name="root"  output ="toHtml" template = "mypage.phtml"/>

     </reference>

</helloworld_index_index>
</layout>

The content of mypage.phtml displays without a problem but the CSS is not loaded. The path to my css is :

skin\frontend\base\default\css\custom.css

Answer 1

The path to the stylesheet directory will depend on what you have set in System=>Configuration=>General=>Design=>Themes=>Skin (Images / CSS) so depending on what you have set there, it will look in that directory for the CSS file.

You can easily find out where Magento is looking for that stylesheet by going on the frontend of the website and looking at the console log, there should be a 404 for the custom.css file.

Always make sure to flush your cache when you make layout changes

Answer 2

you can try below code this code work for me

<reference name="head">
    <action method="addItem">
        <type>skin_css</type>
        <name>css/custom.css</name>
    </action>
</reference>