Web Page Backgrounds 101

The wallpaper you choose for your computer's desktop and the web page background you'd like to add to your web site have at least one thing in common: they're both great ways to add a background image, texture or pattern to your website. Your computer's operating system makes it easy to add or change wallpaper; it's usually just a case of finding the background image you want and then clicking your mouse. But adding a background to a web site requires a little more than basic point-and-click skills. Fortunately, there are several ways to change a simple white background into a much more appealing visual experience for your web site visitors.

The most demanding of these is to create your own backgrounds. To do this, you'll need to have a basic knowledge of some kind of graphic design software, so you can create the good-looking GIF or JPEG images your backgrounds will need. Although you don't need an expensive program like Photoshop, if you're a quick study you can download a free 30-day trial copy of Photoshop from Adobe and dive right into the process of creating your own web page backgrounds. Remember, too, that you'll also need a basic understanding of HTML to add the HTML tags to your website that will make your background images appear.

If you don't feel you should have to learn the basics of graphic design to give your web page a background, another approach is to find web page backgrounds on the web.

Web masters working on their first website will often look for free clip art sites as a source for their web page backgrounds. That's exactly what I did for my first web site and the results were, well, somewhat uneven. Because a web page background is made up of a single image file that tiles across the page, it's important that you can't see the seams between the tiles � something that doesn't always work well with clip art backgrounds. You may also discover that the web page backgrounds on clip art sites are often just too garish or even worse, too tacky.

While researching this article, I found it fascinating that a fairly large percentage of people trolling the search engines for "web page backgrounds" are actually looking for a professionally designed web page template.

Choosing a professional-grade template is the third way to give your web page a great-looking background. These ready-made web templates are not only easy to use and customize, they also look fabulous and come with beautiful images and backgrounds that will definitely make your site stand out in a crowd. With this framework in place, all that's left is to add great content that gives your site its own unique voice.

That's why, in the long run, choosing a template is the fastest and easiest way to get your web site up and running while also giving it the professional look you want.

Matt Paolini is an experienced webmaster with an interest in graphic design and website design. Visit his site at www.webpagebackgrounds.biz to learn more about web page backgrounds.

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