A Django starter project to be used for ChrisDev sites

First, make sure you are using virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper:

$ mkvirtualenv --distribute myproject-env

You will also need to ensure that the virtualenv has the project directory added to the path. Adding the project directory will allow django-admin.py to be able to change settings using the --settings flag.

Use add2virtualenv which will take care of adding the project path to the site-directory for you:

$ add2virtualenv /path/to/myproject

To create the project:

django-admin.py startproject [myproject] --template=https://github.com/chrisdev/chrisdevsite-template/zipball/master

Then install the requirements:

pip install -r requirements/local.txt

The starter project provides for multiple settings and requirement files. Because of this, we generally no longer use manage.py to run commands such as runserver, syncdb etc. For example we can start the development server as follows :

django-admin.py runserver  --settings=[myproject].settings.local

The local.py module is designed for local development

This turns on the DEBUG settings, set the default database to sqlite3 (default.db) adds debug_toolbar to INSTALLED_APPS and adds the debug-toolbar middleware.

For a more custom local environment you should create a new "dev" settings module. As an example, the template project provides dev_chris.py which provides for postgresql default database. To run the development server using these settings:

django-admin.py runserver  --settings=[myproject].settings.dev_chris

To cut down the amount of typing you can store your --settings in an environmental variable called DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE :

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=[myproject].settings.dev_chris
django-admin.py runserver

You need to create a YAML file called _default.cfg in the project_root which contains information about your servers, prroduction or test server settings and seceret keys. The file should never bee added to you source control repo and should be kept in a safe place. Here is the set up of a typical _default.cfg :

---
nginx_root:  /etc/nginx/sites-available
test_hosts:   ['svr1.chrisdev.com']
prod_hosts:   ['srv2.chrisdev.com']
sites:   /usr/local/sites
virtualenvs:   /home/django/virtualenvs/
nginx_root:   /etc/nginx//sites-available
gunicorn:  127.0.0.1:2013
user:   django_user
memcache: 127.0.0.1:11211
db_user: db_user
db_passwd: XXXXX
db_host: db_host
db_name_production: prod_site_db
db_name_test: test_site_db
email_from: webmaster@client.com
email_user: info@chrisdev.com
email_password: XXX
email_host: mymail.com
secret_key: django_seceret_key
testing_site_name: test_site.chrisdev.com
production_site_name: client.com
akismet_api_key: XXXXX

The new project template also utilises multiple requirements files:

_base.txt
local.txt
production.txt
test.txt

_base.txt contains the core requirements for the project while local.txt will install the django-debug-toolbar etc.:

pip install -r requirements/local.txt