Using the ManifestStaticFilesStorage storage backend alters the filename of our static files. For example, style.css becomes something like style.3d94ea84cd8a.css. When collectstatic is run and finds a file that has changed, the MD5 portion of the filename will be updated (style.3d94ea84cd8a.css -> style.1d74ea7349df.css). This prevents browsers and other caching technologies (e.g. Cloudflare) from referring to an outdated static file.

Here are the minimum settings / steps to get this going:

# settings.py
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorage'

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles'),
]

After setup (and after updates to any files contained within STATICFILES_DIRS), make sure to run ./manage.py collectstatic. This is easy to forget!

More:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/contrib/staticfiles/#manifeststaticfilesstorage
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/settings/#staticfiles-storage