title: static files not found in django 1.11
body: <p>I am getting <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/nXnJe.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"Not Found"</a> when accessing any page on localhost.
  I have read all related posts but still cannot understand why.</p>
  
  <p>I have included <code>'django.contrib.staticfiles'</code> in INSTALLED_APPS.</p>
  
  <p>I have <code>DEBUG = TRUE</code> in my settings.py</p>
  
  <p>my project layout and code is as the following.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you in advance.</p>
  
  <pre><code>repo_root
  ├── manage.py
  │   
  ├── project_root
  │   │
  │   ├── accounts
  │   │   ├── migrations
  │   │   ├── __init__.py
  │   │   ├── admin.py
  │   │   ├── apps.py
  │   │   ├── models.py
  │   │   ├── tests.py
  │   │   ├── views.py
  │   │   └── urls.py
  │   │
  │   ├── templates
  │   │   └── index.html   
  │   │
  │   └── static
  │       └── assets
  │           ├── bootstrap
  │           ├── css
  │           ├── fonts
  │           ├── img
  │           └── js
  │   
  ├── config_root
  │   ├── __init__.py
  │   ├── settings.py
  │   ├── urls.py
  │   └── wsgi.py
  │  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>settings.py</p>
  
  <pre><code>STATIC_URL = '/static/'
  
  STATICFILES_DIRS = [
      os.path.join(
          BASE_DIR,
          'project_root/static/assets')
  ]
  
  STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(
      BASE_DIR,
      'project_root/staticfiles')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>index.html</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta charset="utf-8"&gt;
      &lt;meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, shrink-to-fit=no"&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;index&lt;/title&gt;
      &lt;meta name="description" content="sample_content"&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="'static/assets/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css'"&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat:400,400i,700,700i,600,600i"&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="'static/assets/fonts/simple-line-icons.min.css'"&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/baguettebox.js/1.10.0/baguetteBox.min.css"&gt;
      &lt;link rel="stylesheet" href="'static/assets/css/smoothproducts.css'"&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>urls.py</p>
  
  <pre><code>url(r'^index/$', IndexView.as_view())
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>views.py</p>
  
  <pre><code>class IndexView(TemplateView):
      template_name = "index.html"
  </code></pre>