Background music that’s persistent between pages

Yes, that’s the only way, or do it in Flash. Using frames sucks though for many, many reasons.

Anyway, thrusting music on your visitors that they might not want is simply rude: if you do insist on including music, make sure you have a way of turning it off.

There’s a way to make music persistent between pages with flash?

What I mean is you would build your whole website in Flash.

Flash doesn’t have the concept of ‘pages’ — you effectively build an application that’s self contained and does everything in there, including playing music when it starts — the music can be controlled however you like. The Flash app just sits on a single webpage. If you’re building a normal kind of text based website, just forget about Flash, it’s not designed for building accessible, usable and seo friendly sites and it definitely doesn’t have a place in blogging, unless you’re using it to power audio/video or animated content.

What exactly do you need background music for?

OK – thanks but I’m not really interested in building a flash site, it’s for a WordPress installation.

I just want to have background music, to set the mood.

I realise I’m probably going to just have to “try it”, just wondered if there was anyone else had done so and could offer some helpful advice before I go for it.

I’d seriously consider if that’s a good idea. You might like something that could be seriously off putting for your readers. Music is a highly personal thing and a lot of people don’t want music while they are reading, particularly if it isn’t their taste.

For others, they might already be listening to their own music through their computer and there is nothing more obtrusive and annoying than a website that tries to outdo your own current favourite track by suddenly blasting out with some unexpected noise.

Please have a read of these:

https://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-convince-a-client-their-site-doesnt-need-music
https://www.lifespy.com/2006/no-background-music-please-were-websites/

If after that you still think background music is a good idea, then go ahead and implement it but at least give people the option of switching it off. (Searching for “background music on websites” on google will give you plenty of solutions.)

The site is for a friend whose young daughter died of leukemia at the age of 6. She wanted to chose the music for her funeral and we thought it was fitting to honour that by adding it to the website, which is a memorial for her, and will be visited by friends and family.

Making a case that music on a website is never appropriate assumes that no-one ever has a good reason to do it. I’m not really bothered if a few visitors don’t like the music, I don’t much care for the choice myself, but in this case, it simply has to be there.

OK, well your situation is a bit different and I apologise if I sounded a bit harsh. My point of view is based on the building of commercial and not-for profit professional sites where music simply isn’t the done thing.

Oh, no problem. I agree with you in the main. I’ve never thought it appropriate before either.