background page has no permission

Permissions set in manifest.json don't seem to be affectin开发者_StackOverflow中文版g my background page. While working on my script, I had it running out of the pop up and it worked perfectly. The same script doesn't work in the background page, however. Upon inspecting it I see that access to the external website is forbidden. Can someone explain why permissions are only working in the popup? I know it's possible to have permissions in the background after seeing other extensions, but it's not working for me.

Apparently background pages must include the subdomain name - even www. So http://website.com won't work but http://www.website.com will.