1. Big Size Flash & XML Photo Gallery
2. Sliding Menu Bar for Categories
3. Add Unlimited Images
4. Big Image dimensions are flexible and automatically resized acording to dimensions
5. Add URL for the images
6. Music Player with option to replace music loops
7. Change the background color of swf file

All this for only $40.  Check it out!

Here are some excellent wordpress sites to get inspiration from when designing a blog with a unique, colorful, bold and beautiful background.

Web Designer Wall
This is a beautiful wordpress blog design because of its striking background image.  It’ colorful, abstract and unique.  I also like how the background theme is used in the footer as well.

MA.TT
Another bold and beautiful wordpress background design! Notice how the design is repeated in the footer.  Very neat!

Webdesigner Depot
This is a very well thought out artistic blog design.  Very colorful, vibrant and stiking.  The designer has used eements of web design in his design like the pencil, computers etc.  It is very interesting to read how the design evolved.  You can read about the designer of this website here. He talks about the design process of the artwork for this website. It’s an interesting read!

Casio Exilim Lab
Colorful & abstract Wordpress background design.

Notepad Chaos - A free Wordpress Theme by Smashing Magazine
This is another unique theme with a beautiful background theme. The best part of it is that it is free to download!  I loved this theme and tried it out on my personal website - www.rachnascorner.com. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Hope you like these background design ideas!  Let me know what you think by leaving a reply in the box below.

But before you use it, consider the Whys and Why Nots of Flash web design.

Pros

1. Interactive movies, animation and menus are possible
    
2. Flash animation is easy to create and easy to view
    
3. Flash is independent of browsers and operating systems.  It can be viewed correctly by anyone who has the Flash plug-in.
    
4. Animated banner advertisements in Flash have higher click-through rates than static gifs.
    
5. Flash is good for web site intros and adds zing to a site
    
6. Video works well in Flash applications.  It doesn’t need a plug-in that’s dependent on a specific operating system like MediaPlayer or QuickTime.

Cons

1. Search engines crawl text, not Flash intros and bannersIt’s tough to get an all-Flash website to rank high in search engines. Search engines have problems indexing images, even text rendered as an image.  HTML pages get indexed in search engines like Google while Flash pages do not.   This is a major reason not to use Flash.    To overcome this problem you may need to create another site in HTML for the search engine crawlers.  Be sure to include a robots.txt file that bars the Flash pages, so that these pages are not seen as duplicate content.  You will also have to face the added effort of creating and maintaining two sites.
    

2. Ask yourself, what’s the purpose of using Flash? In general, Flash for the sake of using Flash serves no useful purpose.  Visitors come to websites for information, not animation.  Using a flashy introduction to grab a person’s interest won’t work unless your website provides well-written content that provides the information he’s looking for. Routine Flash website intros, with images fading in and out and text messages changing position, don’t capture the reader’s attention unless the messages are focused on his area of interest or stimulate him to visit the rest of the site.
    
3. Flash intros make the homepage take too long to load.Flash increases the size of the homepage which takes too long to download.Readers are time-conscious and may flip to another website by the time your  Flash intro loads. Give them a “Skip intro” option so that they don’t miss the content on your site.
    

4. Audio files embedded in Flash increase download time.This can turn off visitors who might otherwise be interested in your site content.
    

5. Music and sound can be annoying to some readers.
   
   They are forced to listen to the audio of your choice, not theirs. This can turn off visitors who may quickly exit from your site. Do include a Mute button so that visitors can turn down the sound if they want to. 

    

“But I still want to use Flash.  How can I do it effectively?”

If you must use Flash, you can embed it on an HTML page, say as a Flash Photo Album, or as a catalog organized into categories, or a slide show.  You need to add text or captions below the Flash  images.  Remember, it’s the text that’s indexed in search engines, not Flash.  Also ensure that the images used in Flash are optimized with the lowest compression for quicker loading time.

You could also consider using a Flash header for your web site.  This allows you to write text that is indexed in search engines, and also use Flash in a smaller area of the web page so that it downloads faster.  Once the Flash animation downloads, the visitor can page through the rest of the site without waiting for the Flash part to download each time.

Flash is effective  for visual presentations and would even be expected by visitors on sites relating to gaming, music, photography, events and movies, for instance.

Whether you decide to use Flash or not is up to you.  The above pointers will help you make a considered decision that will benefit your business, your visitors and boost your site traffic in the long run.

Take a look at our wide variety of ready-made website templates, that include Full Flash templates, CSS Websites with Flash Headers, static website templates, Flash Intros and more!

This website design is really neat as you can see all the images in different sizes whic makes it look different from the usual photo galleries.  Other nice features are that it includes categories, bigger images, descriptions and next and previous navigation.

2. 3D Flash Photo Gallery

3. Black & White Flash Photo Gallery with Reflection Effect

4. Circular Theme Photo Gallery with Zoom Effect on Click

5. Design with Categories and Thumbnails with Neat Transition Effects

6. Unique Curved Design

7. Billboard Design Photo Gallery - Man Carrying a Giant Photo Billboard

8. Neat Homepage Photo Layout and Amazing Transition Effects of Tiny Pixels

9. Book Style Page Flip Photo Album Website Design 

Click on the portfolio pages to see the realistic page flip book effect.

10. Unique 3D Wall Photo Gallery

It was a real pleasure being interviewed by such a professional young entrepreneur.  He was so prompt in his email correspondence and published the interview within a few minutes of submitting it.  Also very courteous and friendly so for me the interview was a real joy to do. Since then I have subscribed to his newsletter and really enjoy reading it unlike many other newsletters I subscribe to.

If you are a young entrepreneur, I highly recommend visiting his site at www.retireat21.com.  My interview with him can be seen at http://www.retireat21.com/interview/interview-with-rachna-kingston-founder-of-entheos.

Be inspired!