Configuring nginx to serve static files in django

The setup that I use right now relies on Nginx to handle static files and goes to Gunicorn when there's a need to interface with Python.

I update the files on the server by using 'git push live master,' where 'live' is the name of a repository on the server that has hooks set to update a directory that lives in Django.  That directory includes the static files (css, js) that my pages rely on. 

It is possible to configure Django to automatically copy all static files to a single location. Then all you need to do make sure that that location is the one that your nginx configuration points at.  See the docs here.

In my case, I keep all my static files gathered under a directory named "static" so I just pointed Nginx at that directory.  It's reasonably likely that I'll need to change that pointer at some point, so I'm writing a reminder of what I had to do right here.


First I found the relevant configuration file for nginx.  On my Ubuntu VPS that file was under

/etc/nginx/sites-available/username


where 'username' was the user that I was set up under.  There is also a default configuration file, which would be used in the absence of the more specific username configuration. 

Second, in that file I altered the following address to point directly to my static directory

     location /static {
        alias /home/path/to/my/static/directory;
    }




Third, I refreshed nginx:
sudo nginx -reload


Fourth: There was no fourth step.  That's it!

nginx, postgresql, django, virtualenv

Nice tutorial here on Digital Ocean:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-django-with-postgres-nginx-and-gunicorn

The instructions fell apart a bit once I got to the section configuring postgres.  Basically, when I expected to see a query about a role name it skipped that and started asking me about a password.

So for the configuration of postgres on Ubuntu, I recommend skipping over to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostgreSQL  .

After that I went back to the guide.

I found that since I was using python3 and because of a bug in 'pip' where it wants to install things globally, I had to change the

'pip install psycopg2' inside my virtual environment to
'pip3 install psycopg2' to get a local installation with python3.

Next, there is a depracated command in the tutorial that no longer works.
Replace

gunicorn_django --bind yourdomainorip.com:8001

with

 gunicorn myapp.wsgi:application --bind yourdomainorip:8001