Django Nginx Unable to serve Static Files

Nginx won't serve my Django static files while gunicorn serves as expected. I have my settings as:

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

while my nginx.conf has:

events {}
http {
 server {
   listen 80;
   server_name 127.0.0.1 cloud101.dev www.cloud101.dev;

   # Correctly point to your static files directory
   # root /usr/src/app/staticfiles;

   location /static {
     root /usr/src/app/staticfiles;
   }

   location / {
     proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
     proxy_set_header Host $host;
     proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
     proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
   }

the Dockerfile has:

# pull the official base image
FROM python:3.12.2-bullseye
...
# Install Nginx and dependencies
RUN apt-get install -y nginx
# copy project
COPY . /usr/src/app
COPY website/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

EXPOSE 8000

RUN python manage.py collectstatic -v 2 --noinput

CMD ["gunicorn", "--bind", "0.0.0.0:8000", "website.wsgi:application"]

gunicorn serves alright but the static files are not served although the default server does. What am I missing?

Replace root with alias.

location /static {
     alias /usr/src/app/staticfiles;
   }

root means that defined location lies under given root folder. In your case it means /usr/src/app/staticfiles/static which is wrong. Your files are not in staticfiles/static, you just need to map url /static to folder /usr/src/app/staticfiles - this can be done with alias directive.

root directive docs

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