Another suggestion for you
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="XHTML namespace">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body { margin:0 ; padding:0 ; background-image: url( 'bg.jpg' ); }
#container { margin:0 auto ; width:950px ; }
#container { min-height:500px ; height:auto !important ; height:500px }
#container { border:1px solid #cccccc; background-color:#ffffff ; }
-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<h1>Container Style</h1>
<p>A 950 pixel wide container centered <br />With 500 pixel min height<br />Border and background color</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
For the rest of your code position:absolute is probably not the best way to go