serving static files on Django production tutorial

Development

STATICFILES_DIRS should have all static directories inside which all static files are resident.

STATIC_URL should be /static/ if your files are in local machine otherwise put the base URL here e.g. http://example.com/.

INSTALLED_APPS should include django.contrib.staticfiles.

In the template, load the staticfiles module:

{% load staticfiles %}
<img src='{% static "images/test.png" %}' alt='img' />

Production

Add STATIC_ROOT that is used by Django to collect all static files from STATICFILES_DIRS to it.

Collect static files:

$ python manage.py collectstatic

Add the path to urls.py:

from . import settings

urlpatterns = patterns('',
..
    url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.STATIC_ROOT)}),)

More detailed articles are listed below:

• http://blog.xjtian.com/post/52685286308/serving-static-files-in-django-more-complicated

• http://agiliq.com/blog/2013/03/serving-static-files-in-django/

Sorry, don't have a step by step tutorial. But here is a high level overview that might help:

1. You probably want to go with the Apache server ( http://httpd.apache.org/) This comes with most *nix distributions.
2. You then want to use mod python (or as the commenter pointed out mod_wsgi: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modwsgi/) to connect to Django : http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modpython/?from=olddocs. Once you complete this step, Apache is now fronting for Django.
3. Next you want to collect the static files in your Django into one directory and point apache at that directory. You can do this using the the ./manage.py collectstatic if you used django.contrib.staticfiles (http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/.)

So the trick is you're not telling Django to delegate serving static files to a specific server. Rather you're telling httpd which urls are served via Django and what urls are static files.

Another way of saying this is that all requests come to the Apache web server. The webserver, according to the rules you specify in httpd.conf, will decide whether the request is for a static file or whether it is for a dynamic file generated by django. If it for a static file it will simply serve the file. If the request is for a dynamic file it will, via modpython, pass the request to Django.

Hope that helps.