I'm playing with my damn website - again. (WordPress, booklives.com) I bought an image that I want to use as the background for the words, at least on the main page, but I apparently don't know how to do that. I installed it as the background, and as far as I can see it's there, but there's a text box on top of it that's blocking almost all the image. Is there a way to either make the text box transparent or get rid of it entirely or put the image I bought as the background of the text box rather than the background background? Anyone good with WordPress?
It depends on the wordpress theme. If you're referring to the banner/header/title as the "text box" in question, I found with mine that I had to load the image into a photo editing program and create the banner there. Then I loaded it into wordpress as a "logo" under the header area. Otherwise it was just a blank box with the title in the middle. I'm no expert either... still screwing around with it.
Hmmm... okay, I've tried a different theme and the image shows up... But now it's too intense and it overpowers my text. Maybe I need to find a way to make it fainter? Is that a job for GIMP?
You could make it more faint by using picmonkey and putting a filter screen over it. I don't use GIMP, so I don't know if that would work, but picmonkey is easy to use and pretty intuitive for simple things.
Is there a name for that? Like, these are the filter categories available to me in GIMP: Does one of those look like a likely candidate for a fading effect?
I should have asked - are there words that need to be read, or are you trying to make it blend so words stand out over it? Hard to try to help when I don't know the parameters.
There are words that need to be read - that's why I'm trying to fade it. I don't seem to be able to cut and paste an image here, or even to attach one. Not sure why it's so large... anyway, you can see where I am at the moment at booklives.com I think I might want to change the font, and I think I can stand to be a bit less faded on the image...
@BayView I see. Are you dedicated to the colors? I ask because I think if you put a single color mask over it it will still show the pic, but let you control the contrast of the words you're putting over top of it. Does that make sense?
I think it makes sense... like, a crude example, put an orange wash on the image and then use blue lettering or something?
Kind of yes. For instance you could put a light teal wash over it and then the black text you have should stand out perfectly. You wouldn't have to even blur it if you go that direction.
The original image was quite vivid... I don't know whether a wash would be enough to tone that down? The original is at http://annewipf.deviantart.com/art/Freedom-The-carousel-255438367
It is quite vivid (and lovely). I think your best bet would be to go with red or blue and then change your font to a bolder one for text. Purple might work too. Yellow and green will make it too dark I think.
I have quite a bit of smaller font on the other pages on the site, and I don't know how to have a background image for my home page but a different or no background image for the other pages. I'm worried that if the text goes too bold, it'll be over-the-top for the other pages...
Can you put the image in the header as a banner, and leave the page plain? I understand what you're worried about, I'm just not sure there's a simple solution. I guess you could go ahead and blur it, then overlay the color, and maybe that would be enough?
@BayView FWIW, I just clicked on a bunch of pages and I can read them all with no trouble as it is now.
I checked every page (without clicking on the books cause that just takes you to Amazon, yes?) and they are all easy to read. I wish I had a better suggestion, but it's been years since I did anything on WP.