WINDOWS USERS: (This applies to UNIX/Linux as well, but is probably more interesting to Windows users). You may now open up your settings.py file and add SERVE_MEDIA=True to serve media directly from Django. This is useful when you're running Django's built-in development server and want to be able to get to your CSS/Images, or if you have an apache server and don't want to configure a media location. Note that this is NOT something you want in a production environment, as it's slow, and may pose security risks. However, this will get you up and running very quickly for web work. The new setting, SERVE_MEDIA, is defaulted to False and is in the latest settings.py.dist file.

settings.py.dist

@@ -45,6 +45,13 @@ SITE_ID = 1
 # to load the internationalization machinery.
 USE_I18N = False
 
+# If you'd like to serve media files via Django (strongly not recommended!),
+# set SERVE_MEDIA to True. This is appropriate on a developing site, or if 
+# you're running Django's built-in test server. Normally you want a webserver 
+# that is optimized for serving static content to handle media files (apache, 
+# lighttpd).
+SERVE_MEDIA = False
+
 # Absolute path to the directory that holds media.
 # Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/"
 MEDIA_ROOT = '%s/media' % (BASE_PATH)