trying to put an active hover to my custom nav category buttons [closed]

The :active is a selector for changing a link when clicked to show the act of clicking something. It causes some confusion when they called it “active”!

You need to add an .active class to show the current active element and style this differently.

Also, you can combine CSS with a comma

a.ctg:hover, 
.active {
  background: #A6EBF2;
}

Then you’ll need some code for adding the .active to the active item, see the following:

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Adding .active class to active menu item