lost link

After more playing, it works if I put the entire path in the value url(/drupal/themes/CedarCreek/Images/sidemargin.jpg), but not url(../Images/sidemargin.jpg). I am thinking it is because the Drupal install is not in the root. Have I answered my own question?

That is what I was thinking, and I had cleared caches a number of times to no avail, thus the confusion. Especially after it worked on the initial development platform. The initial Drupal install (after writing the previous comment I remembered) was also not in the main public_HTML, but in a sub-folder (drupal) just like this install. I know the installer was messing with .htaccess and settings.php trying to get it to point to the desired domain name, if that had anything to do with it.

As to the last statement, not meaning to sound disrespectful or impertinent, but why? Shouldn't that be stated somewhere in documentation for sub-themeing? It is not stated in the links attached. In fact the later both state "Upload to your site and enable your new theme on admin/build/themes"

http://drupal.org/node/225125
http://fusiondrupalthemes.com/support/theme-developers/subtheming-quicks...
http://drupal.org/node/629454

Hmm, if one is working and the other isn't, I suspect there is some difference in the URLs being generated and knowing the difference might point to the problem source.

First, the obvious question... you say the relative url to the images directory is ../Images. Is the css file that this statement is in at a directory below your theme root? E.g., it's in the /css directory and the images are in /Images directory? If not, then the relative URL should be ./Images/ and not ../Images.

It could be related to the css optimization performance setting being enabled on the production server. Possibly combined with the non-standard theme location. This will attempt to convert all relative URLs to full URLs. Maybe something here is not working correctly. (Remember to clear cache to refresh any CSS changes if this option is on).

Firebug is your friend here. You "inspect the element" that has the background and use the "computed" tab to see what the full URLs are for css background images. Check that the full URL and the relative URL are the same. Just make sure that you do a full refresh to pull in the new CSS between tests (Control-F5 or Left Shift/Click Reload Button).

Knowing the URLs that your browser is trying to find, you can then try to load the images directly into the browser see if the webserver is finding the image or not. It will also help figure out any .htaccess or other rewrite issues that might be happening here.

The "non-standard" reference was to the directory you seemed to have installed your theme in. The direct URL you supplied indicated that you put your theme under the core theme directory. (e.g. drupal-root/theme/my-theme)

The "standard" we referred to was that non-core themes should be under the sites directory. Either, sites/all/themes/my-theme (available to all sites) or sites/domain.site.com/themes/my-theme (specific to the subsite).

See: http://drupal.org/getting-started/install-contrib/themes

It will work as you have it set up.. but the reason to move it is so that when you update the Drupal core version, you don't accidentally delete or forget to move the theme. E.g., you start with a new core install, then copy the sites directory over... and your theme isn't there anymore.

The "rules" are basically the same as modules except you use theme instead of module... E.g. you don't put modules in the Drupal core modules directory, you put them under the sites/all/modules directory.

Note: if you move the theme location, I suggest: make a core theme (e.g. Garland) the default; then disable your theme; move it to the new directory; clear cache; and re-enable your theme / reset as default.