[Answer]-Show Django where to find my static files, with an alternative settings folder setup

I’ve edited my settings (base.py) and I’ve moved my static folder.

Both the top level folder and the app have the same name, so I was getting which folder to put it in mixed up.

I now have:

top-folder
    |-> project-folder (same name as top-folder)
        |-> static
    |-> app-folder

Rather than:

top-folder
    |-> app-folder (same name as top-folder)
    |-> project-folder (same name as top-folder)
    |-> static

My basy.py snippit now looks like:

import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
TEMPLATE_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates'),
                 os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'gantt_charts/templates/gantt_charts')]
STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),
                    ]

See how I’ve nestled a os.path.abspath in there? That’s the other important step I think.

Also worth noting that you can add debugging print-outs to your settings (it’s Python code after all) which really helped. For instance:

print ("Base Dir is at:",BASE_DIR)
print ("Static Dir is at:",STATICFILES_DIRS)

And this runs each time the runserver command triggers.