Add animated backgrounds to WordPress

Slow, soft color moving behind a section while the words on top stay still. Pick drifting blobs, an aurora, living grain, a turning halo, floating shapes or drifting stripes.

Type

A setting on Group and Cover

Find it

Group or Cover settings, Animated background, Style

Phones

One layer on phones keeps it light

Speed

About 2 KB of styles, paused off screen

What you can change

The settings worth knowing.

A style, the tone of the section, then two colors from your palette.

Turning halo

Style

Six styles

Drifting blobs, Aurora, Living grain, Turning halo, Floating shapes and Stripe drift, one per section.

Stripe drift

Tone

Light or dark sections

Auto follows the section’s background. Pick Light section or Dark section yourself so the words keep their contrast.

Floating shapes

Colour 1

Your two colors

Pick two palette colors. Left empty, they fall back to Grinner orange and pastels.

Animated backgrounds on phones, two moving layers on a laptop and one on a phone

One layer on phones

Lighter on phones

Below 600px only the first layer is drawn, which helps most with Aurora.

How to add it

Three steps. No new tool.

1

Install Grinner free

It’s on WordPress.org. Or go to Plugins, Add New, and search for Grinner Blocks.

2

Turn it on

Select a Group or Cover, open its Animated background panel and pick a style.

3

Pick the colors

Set the tone, the speed and two palette colors, then publish.

Good to know

Fair questions.

A setting on the Group and Cover blocks that moves soft color slowly behind a section. Only the background moves, so the content stays still and easy to read.

It’s about 2 KB of styles, loaded only where it’s used. At most two layers move, and they stop while the section is off screen. Aurora uses the most graphics memory.

It runs on phones too. Turn on One layer on phones and only the first layer is drawn below 600px.

Visitors see a still, finished frame in the same colors. Living grain flickers about ten times a second, so use it sparingly.

No. A section with a Container Style overlay, a gradient border, a hover Gradient sweep or Image zoom gets no animated background. Give it its own plain Group.

Pairs well with

Try it with these.

Put color behind a first screen that’s still drawn straight away.

Set a gradient heading over a soft moving background.

Container overlay tints a photo so text reads. Use an animated background when there’s no photo, since the two can’t share a section.

Grinner grinning

Go make something
beautiful.

Free on WordPress.org · No Pro version