Django Statics not accessible (Digital Ocean)

Question

I've build a Django site on a Digital Ocean droplet but the static files seem to be inaccessible.

Looking around for solutions I've think the problem lies in the server settings (Nginx), but as this is even newer for me I would like to verify this before I mess it up.

The CSS is placed within django_project/static/css, this folder is not accessible using a browser:

IPadress/static/css/style.css serves a '404 Not Found' error on the CSS

Edit

I just found the Nginx error log which states looking in for the static files in django_project/django_project/static/css which is nonexistent. I presume this should be corrected in settings.py. Am I correct?

Settings.py static:

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')

@IvanStarostin is this the nginx.conf? (sorry, this is totally new to me...). If so; Does this mean the whole http section? — Sumerechny, Nov 30 '18 at 10:24
Is there any location for `/static/` url defined in the nginx conf? Do you see this 404 in django error log? — Ivan Starostin, Nov 30 '18 at 10:27
@IvanStarostin that was it! I found the django settings for nginx which had the double dir mention. Thanks for the support all! — Sumerechny, Nov 30 '18 at 10:50

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 30 '18 at 10:27

Is this when you're attempting to deploy your website to production for the first time?

If you're running the site locally with 'python manage.py runserver' then your setup looks ok as long as your file paths match, however if you are trying to serve static files in production you will need to serve them differently, I personally use whitenoise to do this from the webserver itself.

Documentation: https://djangobook.com/serving-files-production/

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '18 at 10:43

The webserver will look at /static/ location and you need to provide mapping of virtual path /static/ to physical path and grant permissions to access from everyone.

The below settings are required to put in your webserver configuration file. Replace "/opt/tutor/static/" to value of os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static').

Alias /static /opt/tutor/static/
Alias /media /opt/tutor/media/
<Directory /opt/tutor/static/>
    Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory /opt/tutor/media/>
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Put above things inside block. Remove media setting in case you don't have requirement of IPAddress/media/ urls.

Django Statics not accessible (Digital Ocean)

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2 Answers2