Whta is the point of the /static/ directory?

There are two steps to it:

1. The template tag {% static 'path_to_static_file_within_staticfiles_dir' %} tells Django's template engine to prefix the path within this tag with STATIC_URL. So, the rendered template will have the following format: STATIC_URL/path_to_static_file_within_staticfiles_dir For example: /static/css/layout.css

2. Then when you deploy the project on a server, Django looks into the href and src parameters of these html tags:

• css <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="url_to_file">
• javascript <script type="text/javascript" src="url_to_file">
• image <img src="url_to_file">

and replaces the value of STATIC_URL (in this case it is '/static/') with either of two urt paths:

• On a development server, /static/ will be replaced by the related path in the default static directory of the project and the related app (STATIC_URL is also considered the default folder). If it couldn't find the default directory, then Django will look for the static files in STATICFILES_DIRS at runtime, i.e. it will not be printed in the template.
• On a production server, /static/ will be replaced by a url path that conforms to the rules of the running server. This also happens at runtime. So, if you inspect the web page source code, you will find /static/ is still showing there.

Please note that STATIC_URL is required by Django. You cannot leave it empty and it must always be in the following format: STATIC_URL = '/any_string_here/'

One more thing. You don't need to add the following lines to the project's url.py in Django 2.0 because Django knows that it has to prefix the static file url path in the template with STATIC_URL:

from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()

As for this line at the top of a template: {% load static from staticfiles %}

The {% load %} tag tells Django template engine to look for the "static" method inside your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py.

In the Django’s repository on Github, the “static” method lives here: django/contrib/staticfiles/templatetags/staticfiles.py

• django/contrib/staticfiles is the installed app in settings.py
• /templatetags because "static" is loaded in a template
• /staticfiles.py is the name of the file where the loaded "static" method lives.

Prior to Django 2.0 we had to explicitly tell the template engine in which file "static" lives. Hence:

{% load static from staticfiles %} # load the static method from staticfiles.py

But Django 2.0 requires only the name of the method (template tag) and it will find it for us inside the templatetags folder of the installed app (for example: django.contrib.staticfiles in settings.py). So, now this is all what you need to make it work:

{% load static %} # Django knows where to find the static method / template tag