Often, not every time, but very often, when i open my site's index file, do my work and close it, i wind up with a question mark character at the very start of the file, as the first character on line one. If i don't notice and upload it like that, it throws off the CSS formatting.

What's causing this and how can i stop it?

Link to your site?
Or if it is not uploaded, can you zip up the index file and post it here?

Hiya Mike,

Sounds like you used some strange "non" CoffeeCup theme for your site? That's ok, not saying you shouldn't do that, but there are some strange themes out there that have some hidden characters in them that you'll need to track down. I would suggest (hopefully you have some decent coding experience) that you open your page(s) in a plain text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++ and scan through them and see if you can find the culprit causing it. You can also try running the pages (after uploaded) through the HTML and CSS validators to see if you can find it too.

If you still cannot find it I would suggest opening a support topic with the CC team to see if they can help you figure out what is causing it. Good luck and please come back and let us know what the problem was when you track it down.