 <p>I just did a sample FileField in one of my projects and it seemed to work as you are expecting. Here are a couple things to try.</p> <p>Try making your settings like the following. I know they say it is bad to not end your MEDIA_URL with a / but this is how I do it and I like it better. You just have to remember whenever you use MEDIA_URL in a template to follow it with a slash: href="{{ MEDIA_URL }}/path/to/file"</p> <pre><code>MEDIA_ROOT = '/home/httpd/foo/media' MEDIA_URL = '/media' </code></pre> <p>If that doesn't help anything, create a new simplified model with a FileField nothing customized and see if you are still getting the same problem.</p>