Last week we gave you 3 tips to make your page look great. This week we’re delving into our first tip there about Background photos.

While all the other components of your page are important, an excellent Background photo is the foundation for a great page.

So we recommend a photo that is:

1) Horizontally oriented

This allows you to show off more of you and your personality since vertical photos don’t fill the entire page. Plus, that thumbnail photo, that one you see around the site in Staff Picks, Featured, Search or on Home feeds will look as excellent as these.

2) Set to Fill Window

If your photo is horizontally oriented we recommend setting your photo to Fill Window using our Editing Tools (shown below). Doing this guarantees your picture will fill the entire page on any size screen from large TV-size monitors to the smallest computer screen.

3) Includes you and your face

We all love showing off pictures of us with friends or significant others or beautiful landscape shots that we got on vacation, but this page is all about YOU. Your picture should be one that includes just you and a good view of your face. Thankfully we have Instagram, 500px and Flickr apps for you to display all your other photos.

4) Follows the rule of thirds

The guideline that says a picture should be divided into thirds in order to perfectly capture a person and their backdrop. Ideally, a person sits nearer to the left or right third of the photo (as in all the photos here) leaving more space on one side. For your about.me page, this is especially useful so you don’t cover your face with your bio box. More in depth tips on the rule of thirds can be found here.

5) High resolution

We recommend your photo be at least 1680 x 1050 pixels at 72 DPI. Of course this is easier to achieve if you’ve got a nice camera, but any decent camera will do. Don’t have one? Invite a friend for a photo shoot and have some fun with it.