How to Add a Background Image in WordPress (6 Easy Ways)

Do you want to add a background image to your WordPress site?

Background images can make your website look more engaging and vibrant.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add a background image to your WordPress site.

Why Add a WordPress Background Image?

Adding an image to your WordPress website can make it more attractive to visitors. You can quickly grab users’ attention and engage them with your content.

It also allows you to personalize your website design according to your brand. For example, you can upload subtle photos of your products or brand mascot in the background.

Additionally, you can also add a YouTube video as full background or an image slideshow that will bring your content to life.

However, we do suggest selecting background images that are not distracting or make it hard to read the content on your WordPress blog. A background should enhance the user experience and help deliver your message to visitors.

It’s also important to choose a background image that’s mobile friendly and won’t impact your website speed. Otherwise, it will hurt your WordPress SEO.

That said, let’s look at different ways you can add a WordPress background image. We’ll cover multiple methods including the use of the WordPress theme customizer, full site editor, a plugin, theme builder, and more.

Simply click a link below to jump ahead to your preferred section:

• Add a Background Image Using Your WordPress Theme Customizer
• Add a Custom Background Image Using Full Site Editor
• Add Background Image Using WordPress Theme Builder
• Add a Custom Background Image in WordPress Using a Plugin
• Add Background Images using CSS Hero
• Add Custom Background Images Anywhere in WordPress Using CSS Code

Method 1. Add a Background Image Using Your WordPress Theme Customizer

Most popular WordPress themes come with custom background support. This feature allows you to easily set a background image, and we recommend this method if your theme supports it.

However, if your customizer menu option is missing, then your theme may have full site editing enabled. In the next section, we’ll cover how to use the full site editor to change your background image.

To use the Customizer, you need to visit the Appearance » Customize page in your WordPress admin. This will launch the WordPress theme customizer where you can change different theme settings while viewing a live preview of your website.

An important thing to remember is that the options you see will vary based on the WordPress theme you’re using. For this tutorial, we are using the Astra theme.

If you’re using a different theme, then you may need to look up that theme’s documentation or contact the theme developer to find out how to add a background image if you can’t find it in the customizer.

In the Astra theme’s customizer options, you need to click on ‘Global’ in the panel to the left.

After that, you’ll see different Global options to customize your Astra theme.

Go ahead and click into the ‘Colors’ section.

Here, you can change the theme colors, including the background color. You can also customize your links, body text, headings, borders, and more.

To add a background image, scroll down to the ‘Surface Color’ section. Then you can click on the ‘Site Background’ option and switch to the ‘Image’ tab.

After that, simply click the ‘Select Background Image’ button.

This will bring up the WordPress media library, where you can upload an image from your computer or select one you have previously uploaded.

After you have chosen the image for your background, you need to click on the ‘Select’ button.

This will close the media popup, and you will see a preview of your selected background image in the theme customizer.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Publish’ button at the top to store your settings.

That’s all. You have successfully added a background image to your WordPress site. Go ahead and visit your website to see it in action.

Method 2. Add a Custom Background Image Using Full Site Editor

If you’re using a block-based WordPress theme, then you can add a custom background image using the full site editor (FSE).

The full site editor allows you to edit your website design using blocks. It is just like editing a blog post or page using the WordPress block editor.

For this tutorial, we’ll use the default Twenty Twenty-Two theme. To launch the full site editor, simply go to Appearance » Editor from your WordPress dashboard.

Once you’re in the full site editor, you’ll need to add a Cover block to your template to upload a background image.

Simply click the ‘+’ sign at the top and add a Cover block.

Go ahead and click ‘Upload’ or ‘Media Library’ button in the Cover block to add a background image to the block.

This will open the WordPress media uploader popup.

You can choose an image that you’d like to use as the website background.

When you have chosen the image, simply click on the ‘Select’ button.

Once the image is added to the Cover block, the next step is to set it as the background of the page.

To do so, click on the List View icon at the top (icon with 3 dashes) to open an outline view of theme elements, such as the site header and footer.

After that, simply drag and drop all the template elements under the Cover block in the list view.

When they are all under there, the Cover block’s image will show up as the site’s background.

After that, you can adjust the background image by clicking into the Cover block and selecting the gear icon in the top right corner of the screen. This opens the Block settings panel.

You will find options to make the image a fixed background, repeated background, adjust its overlay, edit the color, and more.

When you’re done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button.

That’s it! You’ve successfully added a background image using the full site editor.

Method 3. Add Background Image Using WordPress Theme Builder

Another way you can add custom background images to your website is by using a WordPress theme builder like SeedProd.

It is the best WordPress landing page plugin and website builder. You get drag and drop functionality to easily customize your website design without touching a single line of code.

For this tutorial, we’ll use the SeedProd Pro version because it includes the theme builder. There is also a SeedProd Lite version that you can try for free.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is active, you’ll see the SeedProd welcome screen in your WordPress dashboard. Next, simply enter your license key and click the ‘Verify Key’ button. You can find the license key in your SeedProd account area.

Next, you’ll need to head to SeedProd » Theme Builder in your WordPress admin panel.

Go ahead and click the ‘Themes’ button at the top.

SeedProd will now offer multiple theme templates to choose from.

You can hover over any template that you’d like to use and click on it. Let’s use the ‘Starter’ theme template for this tutorial.

From here, SeedProd will generate different templates such as the homepage, single post, single page, sidebar, header, and more.

To add a background image that appears on the entire website and on all the theme templates, go ahead and click the ‘Edit Design’ option under Global CSS.

On the next screen, you’ll see global CSS settings you can change.

Simply click on the ‘Background’ option.

After that, you’ll see the Background Image options.

Go ahead and click the ‘Use Your Own Image’ button to upload your picture or click the ‘Use a Stock Image’ button to search for a stock image to use as your website background.

Once you’ve added a background image, the SeedProd builder will display a live preview.

The plugin also offers options to change the Background Position. You can choose whether you’d like to use the full screen cover, put it on repeat, and more.

Plus, you can edit how dark the background image should be by moving the ‘Dim Background’ slider. The higher the score, the darker the image will be.

When you’re done editing the background image, simply click the ‘Save’ button at the top and close the Global CSS Settings.

If you want to add a custom background image for different parts of your website, then you can edit those individual theme templates in SeedProd.

For more details, please see our guide on how to easily create a custom WordPress theme.

Method 4. Add a Custom Background Image in WordPress Using a Plugin

Using a WordPress plugin to add a background image is a lot more flexible than built-in WordPress options.

To begin, you need to install and activate the Full Screen Background Pro plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

This plugin will let you set a different background for any post, page, category, and more. Plus, they will automatically be full-screen and adjust themselves for mobile devices.

Upon activation, you need to visit Appearance » Fullscreen BG Image to configure the plugin settings.

You will be asked to add your license key. You can get this information from the email you received after buying the plugin or from your account on the plugin’s website.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Save Options’ button to activate your key. You are now ready to start adding background images to your WordPress site.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Add New Image’ button on the plugin’s settings page.

You should now see the background image upload screen.

Click on the ‘Choose Image’ button to upload or select an image. As soon as you select the image, you will be able to see a live preview of the image on your screen.

Next, you need to provide a name for this image. This name is just for you, so you can type anything here. Finally, you need to select where you want to use this as the background page.

Once you have chosen whether it will be the background for the whole site, for posts, categories, archives, or elsewhere, don’t forget to save your changes.

You can add as many images as you want to different areas of your site by visiting the Appearance » Fullscreen BG Image page and repeating this process.

If you set more than one image to be used globally or for posts, pages, and categories, then the plugin will automatically start displaying background images as a slideshow.

You can adjust the time it takes for an image to fade out and the time after which a new background image starts to fade in the plugin Settings.

The time you enter here is in milliseconds. 1 second is 1000 milliseconds. If you want a background image to fade out after 20 seconds, then you will need to enter 20000.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Options’ button to store your changes.

Background Images for Posts, Pages, and Categories

Full Screen Background Pro also allows you to set background images for single posts, pages, categories, tags, and more.

Just edit the post/page where you want to display a different background image. On the post edit screen, you will notice the new ‘Full Screen Background Image’ box below the post editor.

To use a background image for categories, posts, and pages, you need to visit the Appearance » Fullscreen BG Image page and then click on the ‘Add New Image’ button.

After uploading your image, you can select a category, posts, pages, archives, and other options from the ‘Choose the context on which to display this image’ dropdown menu.

Let’s say you want to show a background image for category pages. For this, simply select ‘Category’ from the dropdown menu.

The plugin also offers an option to restrict the background image to specific categories, posts, and pages.

For example, if you want to add a custom background image for specific categories, then simply enter the category names under the ‘Select the Categories to restrict images to’ field.

Don’t forget to save your image to store your settings.

You’ve now successfully added a background image for specific posts, pages, and categories.

Method 5. Add Background Images Using CSS Hero

CSS Hero is a WordPress plugin that allows you to make any changes to your theme without touching a single line of code.

You can add background images quickly in a few simple steps. First, you need to install and activate CSS Hero. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to start customizing your website. Now open up your homepage in your browser. You’ll see the ‘Customize with CSS Hero’ link in your admin bar.

After you click that link, you’ll see the CSS Hero options open up. Hover your mouse over the area you want to add an image to.

When you click the selected area, you can see the ‘Background’ option in the left sidebar.

Go ahead and click ‘Background’ to see the settings for adding an image.

From there, you can click on ‘Image.’ Now, you can choose an image from Unsplash or upload your own to create your background.

When you click on the image you want, you’ll see the ‘Apply Image’ button. Then you can choose what size you want your image to be. You can choose the large version so it will stretch across the page.

Hit ‘Save and Publish’ at the bottom to save the background image for your site.

Method 6. Add Custom Background Images Anywhere in WordPress Using CSS Code

By default, WordPress adds several CSS classes to different HTML elements throughout your WordPress site. You can easily add custom background images to individual posts, categories, authors, and other pages using these WordPress generated CSS classes.

For example, If you have a category on your website called TV, then WordPress will automatically add these CSS classes to the body tag when someone views the TV category page.

<body class="archive category category-tv category-4">

You can use the inspect tool to see exactly which CSS classes are added by WordPress to the body tag.

You can use either category-tv or category-4 CSS class to style just this category page differently.

Let’s add a custom background image to a category archive page. You will need to add this custom CSS to your theme.

body.category-tv {
background-image: url("http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/your-background-image.jpg");
background-position: center center;
background-size: cover;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-attachment: fixed;
}

Don’t forget to replace the background image URL and the category class with ones from your own site.

You can also add custom backgrounds to individual posts and pages. WordPress adds a CSS class with the post or page ID in the body tag. You can use the same CSS code, just replace .category-tv with the post-specific CSS class.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add a background image in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to start an online store and the best website design software.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add a Background Image in WordPress (6 Easy Ways) first appeared on WPBeginner.

August 11, 2022 at 01:00PM

How to Customize WooCommerce Emails (2 Easy Ways)

Do you want to customize the layout and design of your WooCommerce emails?

WooCommerce emails help customers get information about their order status, time of delivery, and more. Customizing these emails can get more conversions and help build your brand.

In this article, we’ll show you how to customize WooCommerce emails, and even create WooCommerce email automation to grow your sales.

Why Customize Your WooCommerce Emails?

When running a WooCommerce store, your customers will receive different transactional emails. These emails help them get order confirmations, track their order status, get invoices, learn about how to return a product, and find more information about your online store.

By default, the design and layout of emails sent by WooCommerce are plain and generic. Most business owners don’t customize them and use the standard template, which looks like this:

Customizing your WooCommerce email opens up a lot of opportunities. When your emails match your brand, it helps build trust with your customers, boost brand awareness, and get them to return to your store.

You can even include discount coupons, show popular products, or announce an upcoming sale in your WooCommerce emails. As a result, you’ll get more sales by encouraging people to purchase more products.

That said, let’s see how to customize your WooCommerce emails. We will cover two methods: default WooCommerce email settings, and a powerful email automation plugin for WooCommerce with drag & drop email customizer and workflow builder.

Customizing WooCommerce Emails using Global Settings

To edit the text and basic colors of your WooCommerce emails, you can use the default global settings in WooCommerce.

Simply head to WooCommerce » Settings from your WordPress admin panel and then click the ‘Email’ tab.

Here you’ll see all the emails WooCommerce sends to your customers, including emails for new orders, canceled orders, failed orders, orders refunded, password reset, new accounts, and more.

Next, you can scroll down to the Email sender options and Email template section. Under these sections, you’ll have options to edit the from name and email address.

Plus, you can customize your WooCommerce emails by adding a header image, footer text, changing the base color, background color, and body text color to match your brand.

When you’re done, don’t forget to save your changes. Do note that these changes are global and will affect all your WooCommerce emails.

You can even preview the changes by clicking the ‘Click here to preview your email template’ link.

Here’s a preview of a customized WooCommerce email on our demo website:

WooCommerce also lets you customize each individual email.

In the Email tab in WooCommerce settings, you can click on any of the emails or click the ‘Manage’ button to see settings for a specific email.

After that, you can customize different elements of the email.

For example, enter a new email subject line, content, email heading, and email type.

Go ahead and click the ‘Save change’ button when you’re done.

Customizing WooCommerce Emails using Autonami

Another way you can customize your WooCommerce emails is by using Autonami which is a popular WooCommerce plugin for marketing automation.

Aside from letting you fully customize your WooCommerce emails, it also lets you setup smart automated follow up emails and workflows to boost your sales.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Autonami plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin. Upon activation, you can go to Autonami » Automations from your WordPress dashboard to see their ever-growing pre-built WooCommerce email library that’s proven to get results.

With a single click, you can import the entire email automation workflow with pre-written email copy, delay intervals, goals, and more.

Then you can use the visual email automation builder to make any customizations that you need. For example, here’s the workflow for the abandoned cart recovery email in WooCommerce.

Autonami lets you customize any WooCommerce email and even create custom WooCommerce emails by using a drag & drop email builder inside WordPress.

You can go to Autonami » Templates from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Add New Email Template’ button.

Next, you can enter a name for your email template.

Simply click the ‘Add’ button to continue.

After that, the plugin will let you select a subject line for your email and a preview text.

Besides that, you can customize the content of your WooCommerce emails using 3 methods, including Rick Text, Raw HTML, or Visual Builder.

Go ahead and select the ‘Visual Builder’ option and click the ‘Start’ button.

This will launch the drag and drop email builder.

You can simply select different elements from the menu on your left and place them on the template.

For instance, in the ‘Content’ tab, you can add columns, buttons, heading, menu, text, and more.

If you go to the ‘Body’ tab, then you can then further customize each element, like edit the text color, its alignment, font, size, and more.

Once you’re done, you can click the ‘Save’ button at the top.

There’s even an option to send a test email to a given address and see what your WooCommerce emails will look like.

You can now repeat these steps and create as many custom WooCommerce emails as you want.

What makes Autonami really powerful is the custom goals driven email automation builder that shows you in-line analytics for each email.

Autonami is a sister product to WooFunnels which is a powerful sales funnel builder for WooCommerce. You can use it to create a full sales funnel from start to finish and maximize your sales. It comes with

prebuilt templates for custom checkout pages, order bumps, one-click upsells, and more.

If you’re serious about growing your WooCommerce store, then Autonami is a must-have solution.

Bonus: Fix WooCommerce Email Not Sending Issue

Sending email directly from WordPress can lead to deliverability issues. That is because WordPress uses PHP mail() function to send an email and most web hosting companies don’t have it properly configured.

As a result, your WooCommerce emails don’t reach the recipients or end up in the spam folder. To fix this issue, you can use an SMTP service. SMTP or secure mail transfer protocol is a standard way to send emails and ensures that emails reach your customer’s inbox.

WP Mail SMTP is the best SMTP service for WordPress. It dramatically improves email deliverability and solves the problem of emails going missing or ending up in spam folders.

WP Mail SMTP is compatible with different mailers like Sendinblue, Amazon SES, Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and more. Plus, it easily integrates with WooFunnels.

To connect WP Mail SMTP with WooFunnels, simply go to Autonami » Mail Setup from your WordPress dashboard.

After that, click the ‘Install’ button to install and activate WP Mail SMTP. Once installed, simply click the ‘Start Setup’ button and follow the onscreen instructions to configure the plugin.

You can follow our detailed guide on how to set up WP Mail SMTP with any host to get started.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to customize WooCommerce emails. You may also want to see our guide on the best business phone services and the best WooCommerce hosting for your store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Customize WooCommerce Emails (2 Easy Ways) first appeared on WPBeginner.

August 10, 2022 at 02:00PM

How to Put WordPress in a Read Only Mode for Migrations and Maintenance

Do you want your WordPress site to be in a read only mode?

By freezing your site’s content, you can make sure that no one changes anything on your website, even if they normally have edit access. This can help you avoid errors, conflicts, and confusion when you’re making changes to your website.

In this article, we will show you how you can put your WordPress site in a read only mode for site migrations and maintenance.

Why Put Your WordPress Site in a Read Only State for Site Migrations and Maintenance

You can tweak a lot of settings on your WordPress website without stopping visitors from accessing the site. However, when you’re making a big change to your website, it’s a good idea to put your site into a read only state. 

For example, if you’re moving WordPress to a new host or server, upgrading to a new version of WordPress, or installing a new theme, then it can affect the user experience and stop your site from working normally.

Setting up read only mode can help you avoid losing any data or content that’s added to your site while you’re making the change. You also prevent frustration from a poor user experience when features don’t work right.

For example, if someone is writing a new post in the WordPress dashboard while you’re migrating to a new server, then all of their hard work may be lost. Or perhaps a user can’t add products to their cart or checkout, so they leave your site.

That said, let’s take a look at the best way to put your WordPress site in read-only mode to prevent those issues.

How to Put Your WordPress Site in a Read Only State for Site Migrations and Maintenance

There are a few dedicated content freeze or read-only mode plugins available, but they are all currently outdated and not actively maintained by their developers.

That’s why we recommend using the Lock User Account plugin instead.

This is perfect for membership sites, online stores, or any other type of site that allows user registration.

This plugin lets you temporarily lock any user out of their WordPress account. Anyone who is locked out of their account won’t be able to edit the site’s content or add any new content, although visitors will still be able to see the website.

If a user tries to log into a locked account, then they’ll see a message simply stating ‘Your account has been locked.’ You can customize this message to give your users more information.

Now, using this plugin doesn’t actually freeze your site or prevent database changes. That’s why we also recommend temporarily disabling your comments and any contact forms on your site as well. We’ll show you how to do that below.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Lock User Account plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Before starting the content freeze, you can change the message that users will see if they try to log into a locked account. For example, you might want to explain that you’re changing your domain name or doing essential maintenance.

To change the default ‘Your account has been locked’ error message, simply head over to Settings » General.

Towards the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a new ‘Lock User Account’ section.

You can now simply type a new message into the ‘Locked User Message’ field. Once you’re happy with the message, just click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

After that, you’re ready to put your site into read-only mode.

To go ahead and start locking users out of their account, head over to Users » All Users.

On this screen, you’ll see all the people who have an account on the site.

The ‘Locked’ column shows whether each user currently has access to their account (unlocked) or not (locked).

To go ahead and temporarily lock a user out of their account, just click to check the box next to their profile picture.

If you want to lock multiple people out of their accounts, then click to select multiple boxes.

Note: It’s very important to make sure you leave your own user account unlocked. If you accidentally get locked out, see our guide on how to deactivate all plugins without wp-admin access so you can deactivate the Lock User Account plugin from your WordPress hosting panel.

After selecting one or more usernames, click on the ‘Bulk actions’ dropdown and then select ‘Lock.’

When you’re ready to go ahead and lock these people out of their accounts, click on the ‘Apply’ button.

Now, the site is essentially in read only mode for your users, and if anyone with a locked account who tries to log in will get an error message.

Once you’ve finished your work, you can unlock the user accounts. Simply go back to Users » All Users and repeat the process above. Only this time, be sure to select ‘Unlock’ from the ‘Bulk Actions’ dropdown.

After that, you can click the ‘Apply’ button to reactivate these accounts.

How to Temporarily Disable Comments and Form Entries

Before you start your site migration or other big changes, you’ll also want to temporarily disable comments and form entries on your site. If someone submits a comment or form in the middle of your changes, that data would be lost.

To temporarily disable comments quickly and easily on your whole site, we recommend using WPCode.

Simply install and activate the free WPCode snippets plugin and then navigate to Code Snippets » Add Snippet.

From here, you can click on the Comments category in the left menu and then click on ‘Use snippet’ under ‘Completely Disable Comments’.

On the next screen, all you need to do is set the toggle from Inactive to Active.

Then, click the Update button and your snippet will be live.

If you’d prefer to disable comments manually without a plugin, you can see our step by step guide on how to completely disable comments in WordPress.

We also recommend temporarily disabling any contact forms or other forms on your website. You can simply remove the form and replace it with your business email address temporarily so that you don’t miss out on any important messages.

At this point, you are ready to migrate your site or do essential maintenance work without worrying about conflicts and errors.

BONUS: How to Create Beautiful Maintenance Pages in WordPress

In addition to locking user accounts and securing forms and comments, you can also put your site into maintenance mode, so no one can access the primary content.

A well-designed maintenance page can explain exactly why your site is is in a read only state, and when visitors can expect it to come back online.

This is where SeedProd comes in. It is the best drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress, and it allows you to create a completely custom maintenance page.

You can use the free version of SeedProd to create a beautiful maintenance mode page.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to put your WordPress site in maintenance mode.

We hope this article helped you learn how to put your WordPress site in read only mode for site migrations and maintenance. You can also go through our guide on the best live chat software for small businesses and how to allow user registration on your WordPress site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Put WordPress in a Read Only Mode for Migrations and Maintenance first appeared on WPBeginner.

August 09, 2022 at 02:05PM