First, I would take it into Fireworks and optimize the image so it’s as small as possible in relation to bandwidth, without losing too much of the images integrity. After that, I would crop it so that it vertically extends down around 600 – 800 px from the top, and then create a gradient overlay so that it fades into a web color toward the bottom of the background image. Then change the pages background color to match the bottom of your image.
It’s a cool effect and will keep your load time down.
sometimes we are, sometime we aren’t. but we are always honest.
Maybe caldwell was having a bad hair day, but sufficiently enough he is saying the truth, there isn’t really anything out there that is:-
1. free
2. good
3. easy
you can use things like weebly, etc etc but you would be hard pressed to find anyone professionally working in this field that uses such services regularly. in order to have those easy to use drag n drop style visual design services work they need to incorporate some pretty nasty code. they are not very customisable and beyond a basic site are pretty much useless.
in answer to your question the majority would use either joomla, drupal or wordpress, or simple from scratch html sites. all three of those cms’ are free and good. but there is no magic button with them. without basic knowledge of html, css (and php) you will struggle to get a handle on them. in my opinion of the three, wordpress is the simplest to get a handle on, with drupal probably the most difficult to get your head around. joomla always seems to win for me as the best, the learning curve isnt too steep and it is extremely customisable, it also has a good community of users who share and contribute.
another one I use quite a lot is business catalyst, although this is a monthly paid SaaS type setup. It has a few frustrating quirks but is without a doubt the simplest to pass on to the client when finished. generally speaking I can spend just one afternoon with the client once the site is live and run them through the day to day operating of it.