Question

This si my settings.py about static in settings.py:

STATIC_ROOT = '/home/coat/www/site/app/static/'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
"/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/static/",
# This is Django admin default static files
)

I user django server:

./manager runserver

Then I open the URL: http://localhost:8000/static/admin/css/base.css

It works very well.

But a open http://localhost/static/admin/css/base.css

It print ‘404’

I had restart Nginx and uwsgi for many times, but it dosen’t works.

Answer 1

First things first, this is nonono:

STATIC_ROOT = '/home/coat/www/site/app/static/'

Never hardcode absolute paths, you’re just making your settings file less portable and probably killing kittens. Adapt this to your needs:

import os.path
import posixpath

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..')

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static')

# fix STATICFILES_DIRS too

Now, to your question. django.contrib.staticfiles is fantastic but probably a little confusing at first.

1. You must understand the collectstatic command:

   Collects the static files into STATIC_ROOT. […] Files are searched by using the enabled finders. The default is to look in all locations defined in STATICFILES_DIRS and in the ‘static’ directory of apps specified by the INSTALLED_APPS setting.

2. With runserver, staticfiles are served automatically, but in production mode (DEBUG=False, real HTTP server like Nginx), you should run collectstatic to (re)build STATIC_ROOT

3. STATIC_ROOT: is the root path where the HTTP server should serve static files from.

4. STATIC_URL: is the root URL where the HTTP server should serve static files to.

5. STATICFILES_DIRS: other static directories, in addition to each app’s “static” subdirectory. Because django.contrib.admin is a normal app with a “static” folder, there is no need to specify it in the settings.

Conclusion: if STATIC_ROOT resolves to /home/coat/www/site/app/static/, and STATIC_URL is /static/, then you should:

1. Run collectstatic management command

2. Configure Nginx to serve /home/coat/www/site/app/static/ on /static/, ie.:

   location ^~ /static/ {
       alias /home/coat/www/site/app/static/;
   }
   

3. Reload nginx