Frequently Asked Questions:

How to find background images for your blog

Some people have asked me about where and how to find good background images for their blogs. Here’s a couple thoughts:

This website: http://squidfingers.com/patterns/ has a bunch of cool backgrounds that are free to download. They are all small, lightweight, tiling GIFs, which are perfect for blog backgrounds, because they follow the guidelines of my #1 all-time blog tip.

Another place you might check is http://www.sxc.hu/. That’s where I found the cool paisley background for my wife’s blog, although I had to pay a buck for it. I found it by searching for “paisley.”

To add a background image to your ProPhoto blog, save your background image as “bg.gif” and upload it into the “images” folder of the “prophoto” theme folder, overwriting the existing “bg.gif” file.  If you are using a “.jpg” instead of a “.gif” for your background image , you’ll need to modify line 29 of the “Stylesheet” (style.css) so that it says “bg.jpg” instead of “bg.gif.”

Finally, I was hoping some of you knew of some additional resources. Where do you find cool free or cheap backgrounds? Post them in the comments so we can all benefit. Thanks!

Questions? Instead of emailing for support, leave a comment below so everyone can benefit from any clarification.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 and is filed under Frequently Asked Questions, Pimp my Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “How to find background images for your blog”

  1. On April 11th, 2008 at 11:18 am Katie said:

    Great links! Could you be anymore helpful?! My gosh…your customer service is da bomb!

  2. On April 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm aruna b. said:

    i use http://www.istockphoto.com for alot of stuff as well…there stuff is a buck too!

  3. On April 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm Jess (studio3z) said:

    you have to look around a it, but http://www.eosdev.com/ has a ton of options…

  4. On May 9th, 2008 at 6:23 pm Chantelle said:

    Jared!!! if you have a sec to help me with this that would be great! I have followed your instructions but still cannot get the background image to show up. Any ideas?

  5. On May 10th, 2008 at 8:42 am Jared said:

    Chantelle » I checked your code, and your problem is that you installed ProPhoto incorrectly. You uploaded the entire download folder into your themes folder instead of uploading the folders and files inside into the right spot.

    You’ll need to re-read the top part of this page and watch the first video:

    http://www.professionalphotographertheme.com/tutorials/installing-prophoto.html

    When you have it uploaded correctly, things should work fine.

  6. On June 16th, 2008 at 8:23 pm phototristan said:

    How can I make the background image not repeat? I don’t want it to move when I scroll down and I believe I’ve already got the right size image for that but I’m not sure what line of code I need to input in the style.css

  7. On June 16th, 2008 at 8:44 pm phototristan said:

    Figured it out! I added:

    background-attachment: fixed;

    after the background image line in the style.css

  8. On June 17th, 2008 at 6:51 am Jared said:

    @phototristan: yup, that’s right. glad you got it figured out!

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