The WP Background Tile Plugin for WordPress applies a tiled background image to your blog.  It is as simple as this:

• Create a background image
• Upload it
• Apply it as the background via the WP Background Tile options page

Applying a repeat pattern to the background of a webpage is easily done using css:

body {background-image: url(example.jpg);}

However, if you're not into writing code, or don't know where to insert the css into your wordpress theme, then you will find this plugin much easier. It can also be an easy way of testing out lots of background images before deciding on one you are happy with.

INSTALLATION:

1. Download the plugin from the link at the bottom of this page
2. Upload the wp-background-tile folder to your wp-content/plugins folder.
3. Activate the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress.

USAGE:

1. Upload your background image via 'Media => Add New' in Wordpress (or via FTP)
2. Go to 'Settings => WP Background Tile' in WordPress
3. Paste or type in the URL of your background image (explained in more detail below)
4. Press 'Submit'

CREATING A BACKGROUND TILE:

A background tile is an image which is repeated in both directions over the background of a webpage. Look closely at the background of my site and you will notice the green background is not a matte colour, but a subtle texture. Right click on the background of my site and choose 'View Background Image' (Firefox) or 'Save Background As' (IE) and have a look at the image. You will notice that it is small (16 x 16 pixels), as you don't need much of the pattern to make it tile. Stripes and other geometric patterns can work well for a subtle effect.

Tip: Check out the free online Stripe Generator tool, it's a really easy way to create striped background tiles.

Background tiles can also be used for larger images such as a logo repeat. An example of this is www.mrdupes.com. To achieve this type of result using photoshop the 'offset' filter can be very useful.

GETTING THE URL OF A FILE YOU HAVE UPLOADED WITH WORDPRESS:

1. Go to 'Posts => Add New'
2. Click on the 'Add Media' button (a little star type icon next to 'Upload/Insert')
3. Click on the 'Media Library' tab
4. Click on the word 'Show' next to the file you want the url for
5. Under 'Link URL' click on the button 'File URL'
6. The file url should now be in the 'Link URL' text box so you can copy it.

DOWNLOAD PLUGIN:

The WP Holding Page theme for WordPress is intended for use at times when your site is undergoing maintenance, or is under construction. There are a few themes and plugins out there that also serve this same purpose, the main advantages of this theme are:

1. Simple basic classy design.
2. Easy to install & works 'straight out of the box'
3. Configurable text,colours, fonts and styles via an  Options Page

You can enter you own text for your holding page via the WP Holding Page Options tab in WordPress.

INSTALLATION:

1. Download the theme from the link at the bottom of this post.
2. Upload the theme to your wp-conent/themes folder.
3. Select the theme from the 'Appearance' page in your WordPress and activate it.
4. Optionally you can configure the theme via the 'WP Holding Page Options' tab under 'Appearance' in WordPress

CONFIGURATION:

THEME SCREENSHOTS:

DOWNLOAD:

INSPIRATION

A long time ago I remember being inspired by the Dub Selector project at Infinite Wheel, a series of Flash movies that play heavy dub reggae loops, and incorporate various ways of triggering a selection of dub sound effects, drum rolls and keyboard notes. The project gave me the idea to create a more in-depth Flash music production tool, with many preset sounds and loops, and potentially audio sequencing tools too.

MY PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS WITH FLASH AND SOUND

This was back in the days of Flash 5 and I was a novice with Flash, I had only a basic grasp of actionscript. My first experiment was called ATG Beatbox. Here it is in all it's lo-fi glory!

Pretty basic,  but quite fun to play with too! The main problem I had was getting the samples to loop properly, and to get 2 or more samples to play in sync with each other. These restrictions made the possibility of sequencing very limited, so I ended up creating it so that the user could trigger the samples manually and had to time it right to get the 2 beats in sync.

The only way I could get the samples to loop cleanly was by importing them into the fla and attaching them to keyframes in the timeline.

I later made a few other experiments, such as a piano arpeggiator which used actionscript to play different arpeggio patterns. The timing was always an issue, and I concluded that Flash makes a lousy metronome! Unfortunately I seem to have lost the source files for this project so I can't provide an example.

Other more recent Flash projects I have done which include an element of sound are the SoundFX Player and Artanoid Game for 76 Creative. Artanoid uses the as2 attachSound method to load the mp3 files dynamically from the server.

SOUND VISUALISATION

New to actionscript 3 is the SoundMixer.computeSpectrum method, which takes a snapshot of the current sound wave and places it into the specified ByteArray object. The values are formatted as normalized floating-point values, in the range -1.0 to 1.0. The ByteArray object passed to the outputArray parameter is overwritten with the new values. The size of the ByteArray object created is fixed to 512 floating-point values, where the first 256 values represent the left audio channel, and the second 256 values represent the right audio channel.

It is explained in more depth in the article Sound Visualization in Flash CS3 by Tom Green, which is where I found out about it in the first place.

This is something I'm still experimenting with, but here's a basic example of what it can do:

[swf]/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/sound-test.swf,550,400,9,#000000[/swf]

Notice that because the audio sample is being loaded from the server using the Sound.load() method, the looping of the sample is still not satisfactory. The only way to make a sample loop properly still seems to be to import it and attach it to a keyframe. Here's another more abstract example:

[swf]/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/sound-test2.swf,550,400,9,#000000[/swf]

There are a lot more cool examples of this type of Sound Visualisation at the AS3 Sound Spectrum Contest Results Be sure to check out the winning entry, which really demonstrates the scope of what can be done using computeSpectrum.

NEW SOUND API FOR FLASH 10

I recently discovered the Hobnox AudioTool, which is exactly the type of Flash based audio tool I imagined. It's actually amazing! As it features effects, like distortion, delay & reverb, phaser, etc. I could tell that, although the interface was flash, something else was being used to process the audio. The other thing I noticed was that the timing of it's drum machines was perfect! Something I've never been able to achieve with Flash.

Further investigation of the new sound API led me to these three articles by Adobe Engineer Tinic Uro, which seem to be a direct response to the Adobe, Make Some Noise campaign:

• Adobe Is Making Some Noise Part 1
• Adobe Is Making Some Noise Part 2
• Adobe Is Making Some Noise Part 3

In Part 3 of the article he provides some code for a 'seamless loop' using the new extract() method with the samplesCallback event handler. I will put this code to the test as I am sure it will lead to new projects and experiments for me, the results of which will surely appear on my site in the near future!

Other Flash projects that utilise the new sound API are Tenoran, a sampling and basic sequencing instrument, and Noteflight, a a full-featured application that displays, edits, prints and plays back music notation.

The Comus Productions website has recently undergone a major upgrade. It now has loads of new Flash presentations which incorporate a new set of Comus stings and idents.

The site is now fully content managed with the Admin76 content management system by 76 Creative, so all the text, images and video content on the site can be easily updated by the site's owner.

I used the javascript jQuery library a lot throughout the site, to fade text in and out, fade images and to switch slideshows and videos too.

A prominent feature of the site is the recreation of the Photoshop Lens Flare as an animated flash movie, which I adapted from this lensflare project on FlashDen. It was this lensflare that inspired the most experimental flash movie of the site - the Comus Viewfinder which can be seen on the links page.

Other Flash features include a more corporate style flash presentation on the services page and an explosive ident on the home page!

Visit the site: www.comusproductions.co.uk

Admin76 is a powerful and versatile web content management system (CMS) designed and developed by 76 Creative. It is a PHP / mySQL driven project, for which I developed it's coding framework.

The main difference between Admin76 and other commercial CMS's is it's potential to be tailored exactly to the website it is powering. It can be transformed into a very 'bespoke' system, and so can be used to power many different genres of website, from a simple 5 page website, to a large news site, image or video gallery or a recruitment site. The only controls available in the CMS will be the exact controls you need to manage your site, nothing more, nothing less!

Other CMS's have certain 'tendencies' which relate to their intended user-base. For instance, WordPress is very much associated with blogging, Drupal is associated with community-driven sites. This is reflected in the possible themes, plugins and addons available for each.

Admin76 on the other hand is more flexible in this respect.  It can power a site with static pages, and news with categories and date based archives in the same way that WordPress can, but it can also power all sorts of different types of lists, with as many custom fields as you wish, e.g. address lists, list of file downloads, event diary, mp3 playlists, video playlists, etc. It can even be made to output XML, so it can be used to fully manage Flash Sites too.

As Admin76 is currently only available to customers of 76 Creative it has no 3rd party features, like plugins etc., available. This, however, is another strength of the system. All of Admin76's features are built in. It has an advanced image gallery system, with multiple file upload, medium size and thumbnail image creation.

Other standard features include RSS Feeds, Multiple Authors / Administrators, Flash Slideshow System, Flash Video Gallery System.

For more info about Admin76, and to enquire about getting your own self-managed, elegantly designed website get in touch with 76 Creative.

Some of the mySQL and PHP functions I have utilised in Admin76 will soon be available as tutorials on my site.