Django not updating static location setting - django

Question

I have a project that has been running just fine for about 6 months. Static files have been working perfectly, and everything is great. I have my static files located in a folder as so:
/var/www/html/static/
In my settings.py file, I have the static section setup like so:
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
'/var/www/html/static/',
)
This has been working just fine.
However, I now want to move the static folder to a different location. Specifically, I want to move it inside the main project directory. My project is located at /var/www/html/shq/ so I want to have my static directory located at /var/www/html/shq/static/. I moved the folder, then updated my settings.py file to look like this:
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
'/var/www/html/shq/static/',
)
However, it didn't work. The Django project is still referencing the old location.
What am I missing here? Why isn't the Django project using the new location of /var/www/html/shq/static/?
EDIT
This is what the tail end of my settings.py file looks like:
119 STATICFILES_FINDERS = [
120 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
121 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
122 ]
123
124 STATIC_URL = '/static/'
125 STATIC_ROOT = '/var/www/html/collected_static/'
126 MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
127 MEDIA_ROOT = '/var/www/html/shq/media/'
128 STATICFILES_DIRS = [
129 os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
130 '/var/www/html/shq/static/',
131 ]

Answer 1

You might try doing something like this. I think it returns the list of directories that django looks for to find static files. Might help debugging.
from django.contrib.staticfiles import finders
from pprint import pprint
pprint(finders.find("", all=True))
Also, I may not be fully understanding your scenario, but you might confirm that the STATIC_ROOT is set to the location where you want to serve your static files (where your webserver will serve the files). The STATIC_DIRS setting tells collectstatic where to find static files, but the STATIC_ROOT is where collectstatic will actually place the files.

Answer 2

I figured it out. Not surprisingly, it was an easy fix once I figured it out.
It had nothing to do with my Django settings and everything to do with Apache.
Original
Alias /static/ /var/www/html/static/
So no matter what I did in my Django settings.py file, Apache was overriding that to send /static/ requested to the wrong directory.
New Apache Setting
Alias /static/ /var/www/html/shq/static/
Now the proper static files are being referenced. Hopefully this helps someone else in the future :)