Django CSS. I get the HTML page with no CSS

You need to pass request in RequestContext of your views

def home(request):
    return render_to_response('index.html', locals(), context_instance = RequestContext(request))

Only then your session data will be passed to the template and {{ STATIC_URL }} will work.

Here are some tips to help you solve this problem.

First, anything to do with MEDIA_ is referring to files that are uploaded to the system by users; and STATIC_ refers to files that are part of your application.

STATIC_ROOT should point to the file system path where the collectstatic command will dump all the static files from all your applications. When you are deploying the application into a production environment, you run collectstatic (which will overwrite everything in the directory pointed to by STATIC_ROOT) and then copy the contents of this directory to a location that is mapped to the url that STATIC_URL points to.

In summary:

1. If your application needs any static files (images, javascript, css, etc.) create a directory called static in your application's directory (the same location where you have models.py) and add the files there.

2. STATIC_ROOT should point to a directory where all the images, css, javascript, etc. will be dumped by the collectstatic command. This is only used when you want to move your application to a production server. The collectstatic command will grab all the files in all the static directories in your applications that are listed in INSTALLED_APPS (including the ones from the django.contrib like the admin interface) and dump them in this directory. You would then take this directory and copy or move it to your web server.

3. STATICFILES_DIRS is a directory where any static files that are not part of any specific application should be stored. If this location is set, then django will also look here for static files.

4. STATIC_URL = the URL path that is configured in your web server to point to the location where all the files in STATIC_ROOT are located.

5. The {% static %} tag will always point to the STATIC_URL variable. In order to use this tag you must have {% load staticfiles %} at the top of any template that is using the tag; even if the template is inheriting from one that already as the load line in it.

6. You don't need anything fancy in your urls.py unless you are using django to serve your static files (which you should not do). Use the web server to handle static files. If you are running with DEBUG = True and using runserver, then django will take care of handling static files for you automatically as a courtesy during development.

7. For any user uploaded files which are controlled by the various MEDIA_* settings you need to handle these manually during development; and for this you can use the following snippet in your urs.py. Again, keep in mind this is only for development - do not use this in production:

   from django.conf import settings
   from django.conf.urls.static import static
   
    urlpatterns = patterns('',
           # ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...
     )
     if settings.DEBUG:
          urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL,
                                document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
   

Please read the static files section in the manual; from where I have summarized the above points.

Finally, you should use the render shortcut when using methods in your views. This makes sure that the proper request context is always sent.

you must use this tag ({% load static from staticfiles %}) in your template :

{% load static from staticfiles %}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"  href="{% static 'style.css' %}" />

In your urls, you should serve from the STATIC_ROOT not the MEDIA_ROOT setting

url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$','django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.STATIC_ROOT})

Also, you need to pass RequestContext on your views, like stated in other answers.

In development mode (which means DEBUG=True in settings.py), to serve static files

Simply put the following lines in urls.py

from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
# ... the rest of your URLconf here ...
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()

In production mode, you should use nginx/apache in front of django to serve static files.

Refs: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/staticfiles/

There's a line in your question:

    url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$','django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),

Normally, settings.MEDIA_ROOT is for user uploaded files, which is a different folder from settings.STATIC_ROOT.