Background Attributes
WARNING! You really shouldn’t use the bgcolor=”” and the background=”” attributes once you understand HTML better and after you learn CSS (which we’ll explain a little later). However, since you’re just starting to learn HTML, go ahead and use it for now.
Now that you know how to do cool things with your text, as well as how to make links and add images and graphics, I will show you how to put some finishing touches onto your web page.
To change the background color of your webpage, you need to place a background color attribute bgcolor, and a color value, which will be one of the color codes that you learned about earlier, inside the start body tag:
- <html>
- <head>
- <title>Learning HTML</title>
- </head>
- <body bgcolor="#3cb371">
- </body>
- </html>
To use an image or graphic as your background, you need to use the background attribute and give the filename of the image or graphic for the value:
- <html>
- <head>
- <title>Learning HTML</title>
- </head>
- <body background="background.jpg">
- </body>
- </html>
If you decide to change the background, just make sure that your text can be read easily when displayed. 
This resource originally created by Deborah Dunk.
Revised and edited by Michael Galloway in 2005 & in 2006.