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Django/Vue -> Heroku: Static files not loading at production server

Static files load when DEBUG=True (locally and at the dev server), but not when DEBUG=False (production).
STATICFILES_DIRS is set to my dist dir created by Vue, and dist is not in the .gitignore. Heroku runs collectstatic on every deploy by default (I have not changed this).
The actual error is a 404 when trying to load any static file. The whitenoise package is being used. I've updated the middleware settings, and wsgi.py according to the docs, and have the settings variable which enables compression via whitenoise set (also according to the whitenoise docs).
whitenoise usually works fine with other apps. I'm not sure what's wrong with this. The difference is that I'm using Vue for the first time. I'd never used a js framework before.
When setting DEBUG=False locally, staticfiles still load fine, so I am unable to debug in that way.
Can anyone help?

django-heroku was the problem. In my settings I was using django-heroku. Removing it got staticfiles to load at production.

An easy way to show images in Django on deployment (DEBUG=false)

I am using DJango 1.8 and python 3.4.3, and I have been running my app on Debug mode, and found a way to show images inside a directory configured on MEDIA_ROOT, this was my first question and the solution I have found: How to upload and show images in DJango. But reading the docs I found that that solution is not suitable for a served app, so, if I stop using "Debug=True" the images will not be displayed, and I have to use one of the options exposed on this link: Static files on deployment but I don't have money to pay another server, I just can pay my hosting on pythonanywhere, and for the option to use the same server for the images, I don't have idea how to automate the collectstatic and also don't know how to trigger it when an user uploads a new image.
I have used ASP.NET and PHP5 and I didn't had problems with the images in none of them, so, I have two questions:
Is there an easy way to show images URL's?
Is there a high risk security problem if I deploy my app with DEBUG=True?
I hope you can help me, because I find this ridiculous, probably is for better security, but it just not make sense for a framework, instead of making the work easier it make it more difficult and stressful.

Django runserver is not intended for serving up static files in a production environment. It should be limited to development and testing environments.
If you are intending to use django's runserver to server up static files with DEBUG=False then use the --insecure flag.
You should never deploy a site with DEBUG = True due to security implications.
Static files and media assets are 2 different things.
Static Files
Static files are things like images you created and files that come with 3rd party apps you have installed (e.g. django-cms). These files include images, css and javascript files etc.). So you need to have a settings.STATIC_ROOT for this.
python manage.py collectstatic collects static files from different locations and puts them all in a single folder.
Media Files
Media files are things the user uploads (e.g. photos, documents etc.). So you have a settings.MEDIA_ROOT for this. collecstatic won't do anything to media files, they will just be there already once the user uploads them.
Serving up static and media files in production
Frameworks like Django aren't going to cover automatic production server configuration - that is something else you will have to learn unfortunately.
There are a lot of good guides around e.g. this one to help you get started serving media and static files in production.
Regarding server costs, I'm sure you can find a host to give you some free credit, or pay $5/month for a server somewhere... try lowendbox
Here is a guide from pythonanywhere regarding media and static files: https://help.pythonanywhere.com/pages/DjangoStaticFiles/

1) in urls.py add:
(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
and open url http://myhost.com/media/
2) Never deploy a site into production with DEBUG turned on, DEBUG=True is a security issue,

Why not serving static files with Django in a production environment?

I came across the following example for settings.py:
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
and was told:
The static() helper function is suitable for development but not for
production use. Never serve your static files with Django in a
production environment.
Can anyone explain why and how to use it the better way?
EDIT:
Can I use static() with Apache?

Django is not very fast or efficient for serving static files. To quote the Django docs, "This method is grossly inefficient and probably insecure, so it is unsuitable for production." It is better to use tools that are specifically designed for serving static content. There are extensive instructions for how to setup a static server in the Django documentation on deploying static files.
The basic idea is to not unnecessarily involve Django in the serving of static files. Let your production server, which from your comment it sounds like is apache, serve the static files directly. Here are instructions for editing your httpd.conf file to get apache to serve the static files https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/howto/deployment/wsgi/modwsgi/#serving-files. The static() function in django should not be involved at all. Make sure to use the collectstatic management command in django to copy all your static files to the STATIC_ROOT so apache can find them.

Django static files 404 not found nginx

I am developing a Django application and I want to put it online on DigitalOcean so I can show it to a remote future user. I am quite new to django and python and I have never in my life touched the deployment of web applications, so I'm a bit lost in all that.
I used the one-click install of a django droplet in digitalocean, which uses nginx and gunicorn. I was able to make the app load in the browser using the ip address (159.203.58.210), but the problem is that no static files can be loaded.
I googled that for some days and nothing could help me. I'm guessing it has something to do with either permissions not allowed or that I did not write the static files correcly in my templates and *.py files.
I'm running my application with the command:
python manage.py runserver localhost:9000
I'm using sqlite3 as db
My complete code is here:
https://github.com/gbastien1/carte-interactive
On the server, my app is at /home/django/international
(where international is my site name, the app is called carte_interactive)
My staticfiles settings in settings.py:
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT= '/home/django/international/carte_interactive/static'
my staticfiles settings in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/django.conf (same for media)
location /static {
alias /home/django/international/carte_interactive/static;
}
In my templates, I use {% load staticfiles %}
And I call my static files like so:
{% static 'carte_interactive/css/style.css' %}
And in my .py files, I sometimes call those files like this, which I don't know if it's right:
app_name='carte_interactive'
json_data_url = static('carte_interactive/json/data.json')
json_data_file = open(app_name + json_data_url, 'w') <-- here
It was the only solution that worked on development to access my static files in views.py, but it might be a problem in production with collectstatic and all, I don't know.
I am using django 1.9.4 on server and 1.9.1 on development it seems.
Do you have any idea why my staticfiles are 404 not found on the server but everything works fine on development?
Could there be a permission issue with the folder /home/django/... for the browser to reach my static files?
Is there a better way to call my staticfiles in views.py?
Thanks in advance!
edit:
The console error I get for all my template static files:
http://159.203.58.210/static/carte_interactive/css/style.css Failed to
load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)

I assume that you don't use nginx to serve static assets in
development? Runserver can serve static files, but very much slower
than nginx, which becomes a problem once you have more than a single
web site visitor at a time. You can remove the nginx alias for static
and reload nginx to let runserver serve the files, to confirm whether
it's a problem in the nginx config.
Håken Lid
I removed nginx and made the Django server load the static files, and now I can show it to my future users. This answered my question, though it did not solve the problem itself! Thanks anyway !

How to serve static files in production for Django 1.3

I'm deploying my app and I wonder what I'm missing.
I did the following:
Set my STATIC_ROOT to an empty folder in my server.
Set the STATIC_URL to '/static/'
Added 'django.contrib.staticfiles' to INSTALLED_APPS
In development my static files are in the root of my app in a folder named static.
So, I ran manage.py collectstatic and all my files were copied to my static_root.
However, it doesn't work. I don't know if i'm missing any step.
Any help would be great
Thanks

. 4. Point Apache at your static folder.

As explained in Django's documentation, Django serves static files itself in development only, when deploying your application in production, it's up to you to make your web server (apache, lighttpd, nginx, whatever) serve the static files.
Django's documentation provides instructions for doing so with Apache here

Django while it's not in debug mode should not serve static files, for performances reasons, you should use:
./manage.py collectstatic
then configure your web server (apache or nginx) to serve this folder to the right url.