Django created staticfiles folder rather than static folder

Question

I do not know why Django created a folder named staticfiles rather than static as expected. That might be the reason why I got an error after running python manage.py collectstatic:

The system cannot find the path specified: 'D:...\\static'

My settings file included:

from pathlib import Path
import os
import django_heroku

BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent

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

I had already tried to change 'staticfiles' to 'static' in STATIC_ROOT, but no success.

Could anyone please explain why and how to create a folder name "static"?

Thank you very much in advance!

Answer 1

I considered your static files are placed inside your app(s)

Try removing STATICFILES_DIRS so the setting will be:

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'staticfiles'

...and try to re-run python manage.py collectstatic

• Here is how collectstatic works:
  • First it collect static files from STATICFILES_DIRS if any, if there is no STATICFILES_DIRS in settings it collects static files from each app
  • Then placed them to STATIC_ROOT, so if your static files are placed inside your app(s) better to remove STATICFILES_DIRS

If still there is an error share your project structure