I've been running a forum on phpBB for 3 years now and I've just spent most of the day trying to figure this one out without success.

I uploaded a new gif image to my /forums/images/ranks folder and created a new Special Rank in the admin control panel. No matter what I do, I can't get the rank to display properly.

I have tried uploading with FTP binary mode and with the cPanel file manager. I've changed the permissions on the file to 755 and 777.

I do have hotlink protection on, and all my old Special Rank images display fine, but I turned it off anyway to make sure it wasn't causing the problem.

When I view source or click properties in IE, the URL is pointing to the correct folder and image. I thought there might be a problem with the specific image, so I tried a completely different image file and that also did not display.

The image does display in cPanel file manager if I select "Show File Contents".

For the phpBB rank path, I tried the following variations:

/forums/images/ranks/customrank.gif
forums/images/ranks/customrank.gif
/images/ranks/customrank.gif
images/ranks/customrank.gif

The Properties of the red X in IE, shows that it seems to point to the correct file:

http://www.mydomain.com/forums/images/ranks/customrank.gif

I have also tried clearing my browser cache and viewing the same page in Firefox in addition to IE, but I get the same red X.

For some reason the newly uploaded images do not display, even though all the other, older 40+ custom rank images continue to display correctly with exactly the same settings, paths and permissions.

Any suggestions are welcome.