force footer on bottom on pages with little content

Try Sticky Footer Solution by Steve Hatcher

/*  
Sticky Footer Solution
by Steve Hatcher 
http://stever.ca
http://www.cssstickyfooter.com
*/

* {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

/* must declare 0 margins on everything, also for main layout components use padding, not 
vertical margins (top and bottom) to add spacing, else those margins get added to the total height 
and your footer gets pushed down a bit more, creating vertical scroll bars in the browser */

html, body {
    height: 100%;
}

#wrap {
    min-height: 100%;
}

#main {
    overflow: auto;
    padding-bottom: 180px;
}

/* must be same height as the footer */

#footer {
    position: relative;
    margin-top: -180px; /* negative value of footer height */
    height: 180px;
    clear: both;
}

/*Opera Fix*/
body:before {
    /* thanks to Maleika (Kohoutec)*/
    content: "";
    height: 100%;
    float: left;
    width: 0;
    margin-top: -32767px; /* thank you Erik J - negate effect of float*/
}

/* IMPORTANT

You also need to include this conditional style in the <head> of your HTML file to feed this style to IE 6 and lower and 8 and higher.

<!--[if !IE 7]>
    <style type="text/css">
        #wrap {display:table;height:100%}
    </style>
<![endif]-->

*/

Update 2021 - CSS GRID

Here is a solution using CSS Grid, this is by far the best way to do it on 2021.

html, body {
    margin: 0;
    height: 100%;
}
body {
    display: grid;
    grid-gap: 10px;
    grid-template-columns: 1fr;
    grid-template-areas: "main" "footer";
    grid-template-rows: 1fr 80px;
}
main {
    background-color: #F8BBD0;
    grid-area: main;
}
footer {
    background-color: #7E57C2;
    grid-area: footer;
}
<body>
    <main>The content</main>
    <footer>Footer</footer>
</body>

Old Answer

There is another sticky footer by Ryan Fait that doesn't use position fixed:

* {
    margin: 0;
}
html, body {
    height: 100%;
}
.wrapper {
    min-height: 100%;
    height: auto !important; /* This line and the next line are not necessary unless you need IE6 support */
    height: 100%;
    margin: 0 auto -155px; /* the bottom margin is the negative value of the footer's height */
}
.footer, .push {
    height: 155px; /* .push must be the same height as .footer */
}

Here is a solution that does not require that the footer be placed outside of the main wrapper element, which is how most people structure their pages.

html,
body {
  margin: 0;
  height: 100%;
}

.wrapper {
  box-sizing: border-box;
  position: relative;
  padding-bottom: 1em; /* Height of footer */
  min-height: 100%;
}

header {
  background-color: #cff;
}

footer {
  position: absolute;
  bottom: 0;
  width: 100%;
  color: #fff;
  background-color: #000;
}
<div class="wrapper">
  <header>I am the header.</header>
  <article>I am content that doesn't fill the page. The footer will appear at the bottom of the browser window. However, when I do fill the page, you will need to scroll down to see the footer.</article>
  <footer>I am the footer.</footer>
</div>

Explanation

The wrapper element will fill 100% of the viewport height. (You could also use 100vh for the wrapper if you don't want to set the height of the html and body elements.) The wrapper also has a bottom padding to create a placeholder for the footer to sit.

The footer is absolutely positioned to the bottom of the wrapper and sits in the placeholder created by the wrapper's bottom padding.

This means that when the page does not have scrollbars, the footer will be positioned at the very bottom. However, when there is enough content for scrollbars to appear, the footer will be pushed down below the content.

(The color and background-color CSS properties in the example are for decoration only, obviously. They are included so that when you run the code, you can clearly see the separated sections.)


This Flexbox solution is neater and far easier to implement:

HTML

<body>
  <div class="content">
    content
  </div>
  <footer class="footer"></footer>
</body>

CSS

html, body {
  height: 100%;
}
body {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
}
.content {
  flex: 1 0 auto;
}
.footer {
  flex-shrink: 0;
}

Just ensure you wrap the necessary divs inside the body.

Tags:

Css

Footer

Sticky

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