How to serve static files in Django using Whitenoise

This guide walks you through setting up a Django project with WhiteNoise. In most cases it shouldn’t take more than a couple of lines of configuration.

pip install whitenoise

1. Make sure staticfiles is configured correctly

If you’re just getting started with a new Django project then you’ll need add the following to the bottom of your settings.py file:

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static')
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

2. Enable WhiteNoise

Edit your settings.py file and add WhiteNoise to the MIDDLEWARE list.

MIDDLEWARE = [
'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]

3. Add compression and caching support

To use it, just add this to your settings.py:

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage'

As part of deploying your application you’ll need to run python manage.py collectstatic to put all your static files into STATIC_ROOT. (If you’re running on Heroku then this is done automatically for you.)

{% load static %}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static'css/example.css' %}" />

Done :)

Source : http://whitenoise.evans.io/en/stable/