Is a 'chose your own background'-option smart or dumb

Every page would have to be in php, no?

[sven1977]

Hi. I'm relatively new to webmastering and I was wondering, whether it would be a smart idea to put a 'chose your own background color'-option on every single page so that users can customize the look of my webpages. Therefore I would have to create every single page via a php script that checks the value of a cookie and then decides, which background color it puts on the html page. I might be wrong, but I think this is the only way to realize this, correct?
Anyway. Do you think it is a smart idea or will it slow down my server due to too much php-scripting going on on the server side?
Thank you so much for your opinions. This is a great place to share ideas and ask for help,
Sven

[robotsdobetter]

As long as the web page is easy to read and see, there's no need for allowing visitors to change the background's color. People just want a simple, fast and easy web site layout. All the other junk like Flash, changing colors and so on are a watse of time for most web sites.

[trillianjedi]

While I agree with robotsdobetter in general, I think there are circumstances where the ability to change the look and feel of a site that you visit often is very useful.

Taking WebmasterWorld as an example, the Edit Skin facility was helpful to me, and I'm glad it's there. I customised the way that WebmasterWorld looks to me, to suit my monitor/eyes etc.

But I wouldn't bother doing it unless you have a *lot* of repeat visitors.

I'm not sure how Brett did that here, but I would think the simplest way, given that browsers will cache a CSS file, would be to create the CSS file on the fly with the users parameters based on setting a cookie.

TJ