Source: 📖 Test Driven Development with Python ch8 p149

Using collectstatic

Django helpfully finds static files across our apps, but we want to change that behaviour when we deploy as it is rather slow. To do that, we must collect all the static files in one place where the deployment server can find them—this is what collectstatic is for.

It is best to create a new static directory at the workspace level, outside of the project. We can then tell Django that this is where the server should look for the static files, by defining STATIC_ROOT in settings.py.

# settings.py

...

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

Here we are telling Django that the STATIC_ROOT directory can be found at BASE_DIR/../static/—BASE_DIR is a constant that is automatically defined by Django as the base directory of the project (the directory that contains manage.py).