.entry a:hover.more-link {
color: #a8a8a8 !important;
}

I'm trying to learn how to do this myself, but am not quite there yet. For example, I'd like to apply the same grey hover to the "Read More" links.

1. I ctrl-click, inspect elements. It tells me the "Read More" is connected to "a class="more-link"".

2. So I insert CSS that says:

#content a.more-link a:hover {
color: #a8a8a8;
}

...but it doesn't work. Any ideas which wrong steps I'm taking? Very grateful for your help and patience here.

#content .title a:hover {
color: #a8a8a8;
}

An example of the link text I'm having trouble with is here:

http://www.barrycooper.com

If you look at the heading "No Pain Was Spared Him. No Blessing Will Be Denied You", you'll see it's blue, with no hover color. Compare this to the behaviour of the Featured Article links above, and you'll see how I'd like it to behave.

When I do "inspect element", this is the code that is highlighted:

​No Pain Was Spared Him. No Blessing Will Be Denied You.​​

Grateful for your help.

I've copied and pasted below my custom CSS, so you can see where I'm going wrong.

You should only paste short snippets of CSS in forums if needed. CSS can be viewed through the "Inspect Element" option in a browser any time. Also, seeing the current custom CSS won't help with determining what needs to change for links elsewhere, you may need to create new custom CSS for those links depending on which specific links you're looking at.

But I'm still having trouble making the links elsewhere on the site behave the same way.

In this case, I would actually recommend viewing the original theme CSS file. Here is a direct link:
https://s1.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/traction/style.css?m=1355330217g&minify=false

Look through that CSS for any "color" properties and note the selectors. If you want to find and replace a specific color code, you can search for just that code, copy all the relevant selectors into a comma-separated list, and paste that list followed by a new color property. Here is an example to illustrate:

YOUR_LIST_OF_SELECTORS
     {
           color: #f00;
     }

Replace #f00 with a color code of your choice.

Be careful when doing a full find and replace because there may be exceptions to colors you want to change (i.e. a specialized widget that has a dark background and needs to keep its light colored text). Sometimes it just takes a little experimentation to find which combination of selectors will work best.

This may also help when it comes to differentiating visited vs unvisited links:
http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/link-pseudo-classes-in-order/

If you still need help, can you link to a specific example and point out the link text of a link you're still having trouble with and mention what you found when you used the "Inspect Element" option on it?

I did manage to make the "Featured" bar at the top behave as I'd like (ie links are light blue, hover is grey).

But I'm still having trouble making the links elsewhere on the site behave the same way.

I've copied and pasted below my custom CSS, so you can see where I'm going wrong.

body {
font-family: "museo-1", "museo-2", serif;
line-height: 2.2em;
}

div.feature-main h3 a:link,
div.feature-main h3 a:visited,
div.feature-sidebar ul li a strong {
color: #285A86;
}

div.feature-main h3 a:hover,
div.feature-sidebar ul li a strong:hover
{
color: #A8A8A8;
}

h2 a:link,
h2 a:visited
{
color: #285A86;
}

h2 a:hover
{
color: #A8A8A8;
}

#content a:link {
color: #285A86;
}

#content a:link a:hover {
color: #A8A8A8;
}

#copyright {
display: none;
}

div.cats {
display: none;
}

div.tags {
display: none;
}

#pg-nav-bg {
display: none;
}

p + p {
margin-top: 1.5em;
}

ul li.widget ul.tweets li {
padding: 1px 0 10px;
}

Would be very grateful if someone could put me out of my misery :)

For example, to change the color of the Featured Articles links on the right in the Traction theme, find this in your custom CSS:

div.feature-main h3 a:link,
div.feature-main h3 a:visited {
	color: #285A86
}

And add this "div.feature-sidebar ul li a strong" so that the new rule looks like this:

div.feature-main h3 a:link,
div.feature-main h3 a:visited,
div.feature-sidebar ul li a strong {
	color: #285A86
}

You're right - I just copied and pasted without changing the hex codes. I've changed them now, as follows, but am still having problems:

div.feature-main h3 a:link, div.feature-main h3 a:visited {
color: #285A86;
}

div.feature-main h3 a:hover {
color: #A8A8A8;
}

#content a:link {
color: #285A86;
}

#content a:link a:hover {
color: #A8A8A8;
}

...what I'd like to achieve is for all links to behave in the same way. Links are blue, hover is grey. (That includes the links immediately under "featured articles", which is currently staying stubbornly black, and also any sidebar links).

Grateful for your help with this!

What is the blue color code you want to use? Did you want to use a solid black (#000000) or a dark grey such as #333333?

I've added the CSS code but it doesn't seem to have changed the appearance.

Ideally what I'd like is for all links to be navy blue, turning black when you hover the mouse over them.

Slider:

div.feature-main h3 a:link, div.feature-main h3 a:visited {
color: #444444;
}

div.feature-main h3 a:hover {
color: #285A86;
}

Recent articles:

#content a:link {
color: #1D2471;
}

I'm using the Traction theme, and it seems that blog post title links are colored differently in the "Featured Articles" slider, compared to the non-featured blog posts.

I tried to do this using the "customise your blog" sidebar in the Dashboard, but couldn't find a way. Many thanks for any help you can offer.

On thing that would make this much easier is for all menu items to be automatically included in the "Links" function on the dashboard, and/or add a "links" widget to the menu creation page. This way one could create whatever links and whatever categories one wants and then assign them to whatever menu one wants.

Sadly, this is not yet possible, and I have not yet found a way to access the created "links" directly.

I have certainly wanted to so this myself; however thanks to this post causing me to think it through, I can at least take my own suggestion as I only have one short menu for my site (for negotiation) and another which is quite large which I have been displaying via a widget, but which I would like to include in a sub menu to my main menu. I now realise that I can just copy the few links in my negotiation menu into my second menu (there are only four entries) and then point my theme to use this menu (as in the theme I use, only one menu is allowed.

Hope this helps!

But HEY WORDPRESS!! INCLUDE THE LINKS LIST IN THE MENU CREATION PAGE!!!! (or make the items movable... or even both)

If you are not successful when searching there is a link for the specific Premium Theme support forum for your theme under Appearance -> Themes in your blog’s Dashboard, but do note that the premium theme must be active and you must be signed in as the user who purchased it in order to see it and post to it.

body {
	background: url('http://s.wordpress.org/about/images/logos/wordpress-logo-32-blue.png');
}

I should rephrase the question a little. How do I add a background using CSS?

Changing the color to something custom will take some work. Here is a CSS example you can start with:

body.red #main-top,
body.red #main-bottom,
body.red div.feature-top,
body.red div.feature-bottom,
body.red div#cat-nav,
body.red div.feature-sidebar h2 {
	background-image: url("http://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/traction/stylesheets/../images/colors/green/sprite-bg.png");
}
body.red .nav ul {
    background-image: url(http://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/traction/images/colors/green/nav-bottom.png);
}
body.red .nav li li {
	background: #207b1d;
}
body.red .nav li li:hover,
body.red .nav li li.sfhover,
body.red .nav li li.current_page_parent,
body.red .nav li li.current_page_ancestor,
body.red .nav li li.current-cat-parent,
body.red .nav li li.current-cat,
body.red .nav li li.current_page_item {
	background: #1b6b19;
}
body.red div#feature {
	background-image: url(http://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/traction/images/colors/green/feature-body.png);
}
body.red .nav a {
	color: #c04d4d;
}

Copy each url() value, save the corresponding image, recreate a new image with the colors you want, upload the new image you created to your media library, copy the link URL, replace the url() value for the image in the CSS example above with the link URL of your custom image.

Also note that the example above uses "body.red" and that means it depends on the theme using the red color scheme option. If you change the color scheme in the theme options, you will also need to update the "body.red" CSS rule to match.

how did you change the category and the pages bar?

Can someone please share the css code for changing the standard "red" menu bar colour to something different please. I am using Premium "Traction" Theme.

Thanks