Help:Background

This page has recommendations on how to create an optimal background skin for your community. The background image is uploaded via Theme Designer.

Information

Here are some details about the layout and the way a Fandom site behaves on different displays:

• On smaller displays, such as on iPads with their 1024px-wide screens, the layout will automatically size the content area to fill the whole screen so the background will not be visible.
• On larger displays (over 1066px), the background will be visible on either side of the content area.
• The content area stops expanding once it reaches its maximum width of 1240px.

To make the single background image show correctly at all these various sizes, the image is split in half and the center space (mostly covered up by the content area) is filled with a solid color. You can choose this color in Theme Designer. A solid color will also be seen beyond the edge of the background image, on the bottom and sides, for very large screens.

Note: If you do not want your background skin to be split, you must upload an image that is at least 2000px wide, at which point a Theme Designer option ("no split") will become available that allows the background skin to remain in one piece, no matter what size the content area is.

Creating a background skin that can adapt to these different sizes may seem like a challenge, but don't worry. We have some tips to help you.

Creating the background skin

To create the best possible skin, it's helpful to use a program that allows you to edit images, such as Photoshop, GIMP or Paint.

Here is a background diagram to use as a reference:

• Image Space: The areas outside the grey content area will always show the background image. The parts in dark grey only sometimes do, depending on the visitor's screen size. Make sure your image looks good in the darker areas.
• Content Space: The light grey area in the middle of the template is where the wiki page content will go. By default, the background will not be visible at all behind this area, but transparency can be added via the Theme Designer.

It may be helpful to use a background template to make your own creative background skin! If you'd like, you can download a simple template as a PSD file, which can be used in Photoshop or GIMP, here.

Some advice for Theme Designer

• The final image that you will upload to Theme Designer cannot be larger than 300 kilobytes (KB) in file size. You may need to reduce image quality when saving the file, to achieve this size.
• The wider the color blend/gradient on the skin, the smoother the transition will be to the background color. See Help:Theme Designer/gradients for more details on how to create gradients on a background image.
• You should not make the content space highly transparent, because this will make it harder to read the content.
• When making a skin, always consider the wide range of possible screen resolutions. The better you adapt your skin to fit various screen resolutions, the happier your community will be.
• Look at wallpapers and image searches based on your community's topic for creative inspiration for your skin.
• Always try to use the Theme Designer to upload your background image and to design your wiki. Backgrounds added via custom CSS may be unexpectedly affected by system updates from Fandom and may also increase the time it takes to load a page on your community.

See also

• Learn more about using Theme Designer
• Learn more about using colors in your community's design
• Learn how to edit the Wiki Navigation

Further help and feedback

• Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
• Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
• Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article