Background image url() works on live server but when I open the index.html in the browser it doesn't? - html

Question

The element is selected properly because other properties apply. There are no console errors.
I have tried:
img/hero.jpg - works when I click on link in VS Code
/img/hero.jpg - works when I click
../../hero.jpg - work when I click
../img/hero.jpg - doesn't work
the full path - works when I click
The problem is seen here. You can see that images called by the src attribute work.
Here is the file structure.

Answer 1

I honestly don't understand your setup / question, but I think if you understand how relative URLs work a little better you can figure it out yourself.
On your server you have your files in somewhere like,
/var/www/html/index.html
/var/www/html/css/styles.css
/var/www/html/img/background.png
On your computer you have your files somewhere like,
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\index.html
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\css\styles.css
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\img\background.png
And in your styles.css you have something like this,
body {
background-image: url('/img/background.png');
}
Starting the URL with / tells the browser to interpret it as the root directory. On a Windows PC it will be C:\ and on a Linux PC it'll be /.
However, when you access the page once it is online from a url like https://example.com, the root directory becomes https://example.com/.
Therefore, using /img/background.png will make it look for the image at https://example.com/img/background.png once it is online, but on your local machine it'll be looking for the image at C:\img\background.png
Starting the url without the slash like this, img/background.png looks for the image relative to the folder that the css file is in. So in that case online it'll look for the background here at https://example.com/css/img/background.png and on your local machine it'll look in C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\css\img\background.png
In my example, the best solution would be to use ../img/background.png, that'll look up one directory relative to the css folder, and then in the img folder. That'll work consistently on both your own computer and once it is uploaded.
That should be enough to figure out what you need to do assuming that the problem is the way the url path is declared. Otherwise, the problem might be with something else. For example, it seems like you're using SCSS. Perhaps the SCSS isn't compiled on your local machine (or hasn't been in a while), but it is compiled on the live server?

Answer 2

It works on live server because its settings make location of index.html a root of your document (/). When you open index.html directly your root is different and images aren't loaded from correct location if you start the path with /.
Best Practice
It is best practice to use relative file paths (if possible).
When using relative file paths, your web pages will not be bound to your current base URL. All links will work on your own computer (localhost) as well as on your current public domain and your future public domains.

Answer 3

I had the same problem and it turns out that I wrote the path wrongly. You have to write the url based on where the css file is, not where the index file is. Because the one that reads the url is the css file. So it should look like this:
body {background-image: url('../img/background.png');}
Because your CSS and your IMG are in different folders.