Static files not loading in production

Question

Moved my project to my production server on namescheap. Noticing however that while the pages are loading the static files (css,js and images) do not seem to be loading.

I have tried to read the django documentation to understand if there are any settings that I need to change when moving from development to production and tried to read similar questions on stackoverflow but still have the same issue.

This is what I have in my settings

...
DEBUG = False
# DEBUG = os.environ.get('DJANGO_DEBUG', '') != 'False'

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ["thegradientboost.com", "localhost", "127.0.0.1","http://thegradientboost.com/gradientboost"]


# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    # 'whitenoise.runserver_nostatic',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'django.contrib.humanize',

    'crispy_forms',

    'classroom',
]

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    # 'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]

ROOT_URLCONF = 'django_school.urls'

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [
            os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')
        ],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'django_school.wsgi.application'

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


STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'public/static'),
]


CRISPY_TEMPLATE_PACK = 'bootstrap4'

#deployment 
SECURE_HSTS_INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS = True
SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT = True
SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS = 60
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE = True
CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE = True
SECURE_HSTS_PRELOAD = True
SECURE_REFERRER_POLICY = "same-origin"

wsgi:

import os

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "django_school.settings")

application = get_wsgi_application()

the structure of the files in my project

gradboost
-->__pycache__
-->allstaticfiles
     admin
     css
     second
     third
     fourth
-->classroom
       __init__.py
       apps.py
       decorators.py
       forms.py
       models.py
       urls.py
------>templates
------>templatetags
-->django_school
       __pycache__
       __init__.py
       settings.py
       urls.py
       wsgi.py
-->public
-->static
     css
     second
     third
     fourth
-->templates
-->tmp
   manage.py
   passenger_wsgi.py
public_html

and how I load static in my html pages

...
{ % load static %}
...
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{% static 'third/css/bootstrap.css' %}">

Django does *not* serve static files if `DEBUG` is set to `False`, because Django's handling of static files is inefficient, and likely unsafe. You should configure `nginx`/`apache`/... to serve static files. — Willem Van Onsem, Jan 22 '20 at 10:48
See the [documentation on *deploying static files*](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/howto/static-files/deployment/) for more info. — Willem Van Onsem, Jan 22 '20 at 10:49
Does this answer your question? [Why does DEBUG=False setting make my django Static Files Access fail?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5836674/why-does-debug-false-setting-make-my-django-static-files-access-fail) — dirkgroten, Jan 22 '20 at 13:14

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 22 '20 at 13:23

With Debug True Django manages to load all static files at a low level (and processes too). With Debug False Django can't upload the files, it's not made for that. In order to work with static files correctly, I recommend you to use Django in production with Gunicorn + Nginx.

It also leaves your staticfiles well sorted, use it:

python manage.py collectstatic

My Github project can help you:

Github/Nginx

Static files not loading in production

1 Answers1