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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T00:13:40+00:00

I have seen following CSS rule at two website /* First example */ background:

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I have seen following CSS rule at two website

/* First example */
background: #F8F8F8 url('/images/noise.png?1333540701') top left;
/* Second example from a different site */
background: #F8F8F8 url('/images/noise.png?1326131369') top left;

What does *.png?randomNumbers mean after png image path? What purpose they serve here?

First one is from bastsov and the other is from Matt Gemmell. Both use Octopress framework.

Edit
It is not that both rules are being used at the same site. Each rule comes from a different site.

Moreover, it seems they use the same number everywhere, whenever noise.png is mentioned. For example,

/* rule for navigation bar */
background: url('/images/noise.png?1333540701'),linear-gradient(#E0E0E0,#CCC,#B0B0B0)
/* rule for #main */
background: #F2F2F2 url('/images/noise.png?1333540701') top left;

I observed the same pattern but with different numbers at Matt Gemmell‘s site.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The number is just a part of the URL that is sent to the server to fetch the image.

    There are two common reasons for doing this:

    • The resource on the server is not a static file, it is handled by code, and it returns different images depending on the number.
    • The number is ignored by the server, and it’s just used to produce different URLs. This is usually for caching reasons, so that changing the number will force a new request to the server.

    In this case the second reasons seems more likely. When a query string is used to return different images, the resource name is usually more generic.

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