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Background
Background allows you to add some context to the scenarios in a single feature. A Background is much like a scenario containing a number of steps. The difference is when it is run. The background is run before each of your scenarios but after any of your Before Hooks.
Example:
Feature: Multiple site support
As a Mephisto site owner
I want to host blogs for different people
In order to make gigantic piles of money
Background:
Given a global administrator named "Greg"
And a blog named "Greg's anti-tax rants"
And a customer named "Dr. Bill"
And a blog named "Expensive Therapy" owned by "Dr. Bill"
Scenario: Dr. Bill posts to his own blog
Given I am logged in as Dr. Bill
When I try to post to "Expensive Therapy"
Then I should see "Your article was published."
Scenario: Dr. Bill tries to post to somebody else's blog, and fails
Given I am logged in as Dr. Bill
When I try to post to "Greg's anti-tax rants"
Then I should see "Hey! That's not your blog!"
Scenario: Greg posts to a client's blog
Given I am logged in as Greg
When I try to post to "Expensive Therapy"
Then I should see "Your article was published."
For a less explicit alternative to background, check out Tagged Hooks.
Don’t use “Background” to set up complicated state unless that state is actually something the client needs to know.
For example, if the user and site names don’t matter to the client, you should use a high-level step such as “Given that I am logged in as a site owner”.
You’re expecting the user to actually remember this stuff when reading your scenarios. If the background is more than 4 lines long, can you move some of the irrelevant details into high-level steps? See Calling Steps from Step Definitions.
You should use colorful names and try to tell a story, because the human brain can keep track of stories much better than it can keep track of names like “User A”, “User B”, “Site 1”, and so on.
If the background section has scrolled off the screen, you should think about using higher-level steps, or splitting the *.features file in two.