Source: 📖 Django for Professionals ch6 p85-87

Configuring static files in settings.py

There are several configurations we must add or update in settings.py.

...

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATICFILES_DIRS = (str(BASE_DIR.joinpath('static')),)
STATIC_ROOT = str(BASE_DIR.joinpath('staticfiles'))
STATICFILES_FINDERS = [
	'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
	'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
]

...

The first is STATIC_URL, which is already included. It defines the URL we can use to reference static files. Be sure to include the trailing slash.

Next is STATICFILES_DIRS, which defines the location of static files during local development. We will set this to be a project-level static directory. The syntax looks a little weird — we use joinpath to join BASE_DIR to static, creatingBASE_DIR/static, and turn the result into a string. The trailing comma is there because there could be future additions where static files might also exist.

STATIC_ROOT defines the location of static files for production. The typical name for this directory is staticfiles. It is better to have all static files in one place for production, which is what collectstatic does (see Using collectstatic) — this will gather all static files found in the project inside the directory defined by STATIC_ROOT.

The last setting is STATICFILES_FINDERS, which is implicitly set by Django but it's not a bad idea to set them explicitly in settings.py. It tells Django how to look for static file directories — first FileSystemFinder looks in STATICFILES_DIRS (defined above) for any static files, then AppDirectoriesFinder looks for any directories named static inside our apps. Order matters here, as only the first file will be kept in the event that two files with matching names are found.