Disable active link styling for Bootstrap 3 one-page site

Question

I'm developing a single page HTML5 and CSS3 based theme using Bootstrap 3.

The problem is that I couldn't remove the active link styling (gray background) that Bootstrap adds when I click a link.

It's handy for normal multi-page sites but here the page won't change.

So the gray background will remain until I click anywhere on the page.

My HTML is as follows:

<nav class="navbar navbar-custom navbar-fixed-top sticky-nav" role="navigation">
    <div class="container">
        <div class="navbar-header">
            <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse"
                data-target="#navbar" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="navbar">
                <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
                <span class="icon-bar"></span>
                <span class="icon-bar"></span>
                <span class="icon-bar"></span>
            </button>
            <a class="navbar-brand" href="#"><img src="_/css/img/logo4.png" alt="" /></a>
        </div>
        <div id="navbar" class="navbar-collapse collapse">
            <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right text-thin">
                <li class="active"><a href="#home">Home</a></li>
                <li><a href="#features">Features</a></li>
                <li><a href="#portfolio">Portfolio</a></li>
                <li><a href="#clients">Our Clients</a></li>
                <li><a href="#contact">Contact</a></li>
            </ul>
        </div><!-- /.navbar-collapse -->
    </div> <!-- /.container -->
</nav>

And my CSS is:

.nav > li > a {
    background: #fff;
}

.navbar {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 25px 0;
    box-shadow: 0 0px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, .3);
}

.navbar-custom {
    background-color: #fff;
    border-radius: 0;
    height: 100px;
}

.navbar-custom .navbar-brand img {
    width: 90px;
    height: 60px;
}

.shrink {
    padding: 10px 0;
    height: 50px;
}

.navbar-custom .navbar-nav > li > a {
    color: #555;
    font-size: 18px;
    text-transform: uppercase;
    margin-left: 5px;
    padding: 10px;
}

.navbar-custom .navbar-nav > li > a:hover {
    color: #c00;
    background-color: #fff;
}

.navbar-custom .navbar-nav > .active > a,
.navbar-nav > .active > a:hover,
.navbar-nav > .active > a:focus {
    color: #c00;
}
.navbar-custom .navbar-brand {
    color: #eeeeee;
    padding: 0;
    margin-top: -5px;
}

.shrink .navbar-brand img {
    width: 70px;
    height: 40px;
}

.shrink .navbar-nav > li > a {
    padding-top: 5px;
    padding-bottom: 5px;
    font-size: 12px;
}

.shrink button {
    margin-top: 0;
}

.navbar-custom .icon-bar {
    background-color: #555;
}

.active {
    background: #fff;
}

How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

Comparing your CSS with that in effect on Bootstrap's Navbar example , it seems that the problem is that your selectors for the :hover and :focus cases aren't specific enough, making your rules fail to override Bootstrap's default ones. If you add .navbar-custom to these two rules I think it should work (provided your CSS is included after the Bootstrap one):

.navbar-custom .navbar-nav > .active > a,
.navbar-custom .navbar-nav > .active > a:hover,
.navbar-custom .navbar-nav > .active > a:focus {
    color: #c00;
    background-color: #fff;
}