Images, styles and scripts.
WHAT STATIC FILES ARE
Files served as they are: images, stylesheets, scripts, fonts.
WHY THEY MATTER
They are most of what a page loads.
WHAT NOT TO DO
Serve them through your Python application in production.
WHY
It is slow and consumes application processes for work the web server does better.
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
Have the web server serve them directly.
WHAT TO CONFIGURE
Caching headers, so browsers do not request them repeatedly Compression
WHAT TO DO ABOUT CHANGED FILES
Include a version in the filename or address, so caching does not serve an old copy.
THAT POINT
The reason a change to a stylesheet appears not to take effect.
WHAT TO OPTIMISE
Image sizes, before uploading Number of files requested
WHAT TO CONSIDER FOR VISITORS FAR AWAY
A delivery network.
WHAT TO KEEP OUT OF THE STATIC DIRECTORY
Anything not intended to be public.
Everything in it is downloadable by anyone.
