nginx not serving admin static files?

My suggestions:

1. Use django 1.3+ (and ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX is deprecated now)

2. Set both STATIC_URL and STATIC_ROOT in your settings.py

3. Define just a single static entry in your nginx conf (with trailing slashes). No need for a second one that addresses static/admin/:

   location /static/  {
           alias /path/to/static/;
   }
   

4. Use collectstatic which should collect admin -> static/admin. It will live under the same location as all the rest of your collected static media.

   python manage.py collectstatic