[Django]-Errors 404 and 500 while access static files in Django

In your settings.py, define the STATIC_ and MEDIA_ values:

# Absolute filesystem path to the directory that will hold user-uploaded files.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/media/"
MEDIA_ROOT = '/path/to/mydjangosite/media/'

# URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a
# trailing slash.
# Examples: "http://media.lawrence.com/media/", "http://example.com/media/"
MEDIA_URL = 'http://www.mydjangosite.com/media/'

# Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to.
# Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files
# in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_ROOT = '/path/to/mydjangosite/static/'

# URL prefix for static files.
# Example: "http://media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_URL = 'http://www.mydjangosite.com/static/'

Also, ensure that the correct STATICFILES_FINDERS are configured:

# List of finder classes that know how to find static files in
# various locations.
STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
#    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.DefaultStorageFinder',
)

The AppDirectoriesFinder must be enabled to collect static files from the static/ sub-directory within each app. Additionally, ensure that your apps are included in the INSTALLED_APPS setting or else the AppDirectoriesFinder won’t know where to look for static files:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'django.contrib.humanize',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:
    'django.contrib.admin',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation:
    # 'django.contrib.admindocs',
    # DJANGO SOUTH
    'south',
    # MY APPS
    'my_django_app',
)

Then, to collect static from the various app folders (e.g. my_project/my_app/static) you must invoke the manage.py command collectstatic:

python manage.py collectstatic

This moves all the various apps’ static files into the folder specified by STATIC_ROOT in settings.py.

Finally, ensure that your static folder is served directly by your web server and not via the Django WSGI application. For Apache2 /etc/apache2/sites-available/my_django_site.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName www.mydjangosite.com
      ServerAlias mydjangosite.com
      ServerAdmin fake@mydjangosite.com

      DocumentRoot /path/to/mydjangosite
      <Directory /path/to/mydjangosite>
             Options FollowSymLinks
             AllowOverride None
             Order allow,deny
             allow from all
      </Directory>

      Alias /static/ /path/to/mydjangosite/static/
      <Directory /path/to/mydjangosite/static>
              Order allow,deny
              allow from all
      </Directory>

      Alias /media/ /path/to/mydjangosite/media/
      <Directory /path/to/mydjangosite/media>
              Order allow,deny
              allow from all
      </Directory>

      # The following installs the Django WSGI app
      WSGIDaemonProcess www.mydjangosite.com processes=2 threads=15 display-name=%{GROUP}
      WSGIProcessGroup www.mydjangosite.com
      WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/mydjangosite/wsgi.py

</VirtualHost>

An explicit Alias definition and a Directory tag for the alias’d directory will override any WSGI application running in a higher-level parent directory.

Execute sudo service apache2 restart to load the new site.conf configuration.