When hosting a Django project on AWS LightSail using Nginx and Gunicorn, you might encounter permission issues. Here are two effective methods to resolve these issues.

Method 1: Modify Nginx Configuration and Permissions

• Navigate to your project directory:

  cd /path/to/your/project

• Change permissions for the media directory:

  chmod -R 777 media

• Update the Nginx configuration in /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_project:

  Change from:

  location /static/ {
      root /home/username/project;
  }
  location /media/ {
      root /home/username/project;
  }

  To:

  location /static/ {
      alias /home/username/project/static/;
  }
  location /media/ {
      alias /home/username/project/media/;
  }

• Reload your service files and restart Nginx and Gunicorn:

  sudo systemctl restart nginx
  sudo service gunicorn restart
  sudo service nginx restart

Method 2: Create and Configure a New Media Directory

• Create a new directory for media files in /var/www/your_project/media/:

  sudo mkdir -pv /var/www/your_project/media/

• Change the permissions of the new media folder:

  Replace user_name with your actual username, which you can find using the whoami command.

  sudo chown -cR user_name:user_name /var/www/your_project/media

• Update the routes in settings.py:

  Replace the existing MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT with:

  MEDIA_URL = '/var/www/your_project/media/'
  MEDIA_ROOT = '/var/www/your_project/media'