Global Backgrounds

Can Discourse sites one day get the ability to have built-in background images?

There’s already something like this on a per-category basis, but there isn’t a global setting. CSS “works” but can get annoying and has a nice habit of breaking often.

Would it be at all possible to have this as a global, native, builtin setting?

What would you suggest as to how to implement this?

The way I see it, if the CSS suddenly poofs, then the background images linked within probably befell the same fate. They are all static and would most likely share the same resource that, in your example scenario, just fubar’d itself.

I don’t know how background: url(http); may be annoying. CSS is standard.

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Something like this. It’s not to prevent the use of CSS, but just to make setting a background more staff-friendly.

Essentially, this is just a way to not have to write CSS to have a nice background.

I doubt this would be default. A background image is not required for most case uses.

Adding a single background: url(http); in the CSS accessible via the admin CP is not much work for a staff that probably understands CSS as a second language.

And for a newcomer to CSS? A search in google for adding a background in CSS will suffice. CSS is a standard and adding one line to the CSS via the admin CP is not too intensive where serious thought would be given to have it be a global option in an admin CP. Have to be careful adding new globals into the CP or it turns into a nightmare straight outta vBulletin.

Still, why have it for categories but not the forum as a whole?

Because categories would need identifying markers that separate it from the rest of the forum. A background is a visual marker.

Also, I suspect a customer requested the feature and the devs obliged it (but I don’t know; I’m guessing here).

For someone familiar with CSS it isn’t too much work to figure out they need something like
body.category-feature {
but anyone should be able to do
body {

TBH, I experimented a bit with background images but after a few tries and failing to find anything that didn’t interfere with reading posts I gave up.
Not that it can’t be done in a way that looks great, but in my defense, I’m not a designer

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You basically need a background: rgba($secondary, 0.7) on the content wrapper.

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It looks like the forum @jvzr is on is doing this. Dunno if he had any hand in the theme, but maybe he’s got the right connections :stuck_out_tongue:

We’ve modified the custom CSS for this. No mambo jambo voodoo magic there, unfortunately for you.

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That CSS is awesome, I gotta admit.

Thanks. Although to be honest, it is until you really have a look at it and then you quickly realize it’s a hot mess ofr band-aids. We started it during the early betas so we have a lot of legacy “code” that’s is probably useless/harmful but I can’t summon the courage to go over it all again.

hi sorry if i revive this topic.
(searched for others but this one seems the more pertinent)

i would like to add a background image to the forum.
it’s a small one to repeat.

i have only a little experience in wordpress css

can someone give me some code to try and tell me where to put it?
were do i access the css?
then i will make some test to see how well it works!

ty in advance!