CSS Static Files Not Updating After Successful Deployment
I'm experiencing an issue with my Django application deployed on Railway where CSS changes are not being reflected on the live site, even after successful deployments and clearing browser caches.
Project Setup:
Framework: Django
Static Files Serving: Whitenoise (whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware and whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage are configured)
Repository Structure: Standard Django layout with manage.py, Procfile, requirements.txt in the root. settings.py/wsgi.py are in comparaplan/comparaplan/. Static source files are intended to be in comparaplan/static/.
Railway Root Directory Setting: / (Repository Root)
Deployment Process & What Works:
Builds complete successfully.
The Pre-deploy Command is set to: python manage.py migrate && python manage.py collectstatic --noinput --clear
The deployment logs clearly show both migrate and collectstatic running successfully during the pre-deploy phase. collectstatic reports copying files (e.g., XXX static files copied to '/app/staticfiles').
The Start Command is set to: gunicorn comparaplan.comparaplan.wsgi --bind 0.0.0.0:$PORT --log-file - (or it's correctly defined in the Procfile and the start command field is empty).
The runtime logs show Gunicorn starting successfully and listening on the correct port.
The application loads without 5xx errors.
The Problem:
Despite the above, CSS changes made to files (specifically tested with comparaplan/static/styles/global.css) are not visible on the deployed site.
Troubleshooting Steps Taken:
Confirmed CSS changes were committed and pushed to the correct branch (main) before deployment.
Verified collectstatic runs successfully in the pre-deploy logs (including using the --clear flag).
Verified settings.py:
DEBUG = False
STATIC_URL = 'static/'
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'staticfiles'
STATICFILES_DIRS = [ BASE_DIR / 'static' ] (where BASE_DIR points to the comparaplan directory containing manage.py)
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage'
whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware is present.
Cleared browser cache multiple times (simple clear, hard refresh Ctrl+Shift+R, incognito window).
Used browser Developer Tools (Network tab, "Disable cache" checked) to inspect the response for the CSS file (e.g., global.[hash].css). The content shown in the "Response" tab is the OLD version of the CSS, not the newly committed changes.
Request:
Could you please help investigate why the updated static files, specifically comparaplan/static/styles/global.css, are not being served despite collectstatic appearing to run correctly during the pre-deploy phase? It seems like Whitenoise might be serving files from an older staticfiles directory, or the collectstatic process isn't correctly updating the files despite the logs indicating success.
Please let me know if you need any further information or access to logs.
Thanks for your help!
Django is looking for the static files on production through a web server configuration like nginx. Use Nginx configuration to provide the path to your project IP on which the project is running, It will serve the Staticfiles along with the css through Nginx.