Trouble accessing background images

[surfinggoofy]

I have recently signed up with HostGator to host my first website.

I have a limited number of documents (3 x HTML, 1 x CSS and 3 x background images) that I have transferred to HostGator via Filezilla FTP. When viewed in IE or Firefox from my own PC, these files look good (considering it's a first attempt) however once transferred to my server I cannot see the background images?

According to the instructions from HostGator, all publicly accessible files should be placed in the public_html directory - which they are - however my background images are in a sub directory called backgrounds. The CSS file refers to these as backgrounds/filename.jpg etc but these are not being picked up on the internet.

Is there an obvious reason for this? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

[Tailslide]

There's two usual reasons for problems - firstly, paths not being correct. Just double-check that they really are in a folder called backgrounds and that they are referenced correctly from wherever the stylesheets are kept.

Secondly - check that you haven't given them a name that might trigger the adblocks such as "banner" or "ad".

Best way for us to tell you is if you post a link.

[surfinggoofy]

Tailslide

My 2 (not 3 as I originally stated) background images are referred to with the css file as:

h1 {
color: #ffffff;
background: #85792f url(backgrounds/header-back.jpg) repeat-y right;
font-size: 220%;
padding-top: 31px;
padding-bottom: 31px;
padding-left: 5px;
margin: 0;
}

and

#navigation {
background: #85792f url(backgrounds/navigation-back.jpg) no-repeat; width: 160px;
height: 1600px;
padding-top: 10px;
line-height: 150%;
border-right: 2px solid #123456;
}

They do appear to me to be referenced correctly, but perhaps you can confirm.

I'm not sure if you're referring to a link to the website, but if so it's

www dot golfing-around dot com (apologies for the naming, I've only made 9 posts and needed 10 as I may have been a spammer!)

Thanks for your help.

[surfinggoofy]

Reading through another members posts, I stumbled across an answer that suggested that the sub-directory folder may be case sensitive on the server, but not on my PC. I made the change and voila they appeared (albeit slowly).

I'll need to look into why they were so slow (3-5 seconds), but any advice is appreciated. They are 81kb and 479kb respectively. Is this far too big? Can anyone point me in the right direction for optimizing picture size / quality etc.

[Tailslide]

If you mean the 2 golfing images then I can see them with no problem (FF, IE7 and IE6)