The fluent_dashboard module offers a custom admin dashboard, built on top of django-admin-tools (docs).

The django-admin-tools provides a default mechanism to replace the standard Django admin homepage with a widget based dashboard. The fluent_dashboard module extends this, by providing additional widgets (called "modules") such as:

• a "icon list" module for the admin homepage.
• a "welcome" module for the admin homepage.
• a configurable module layout for the admin homepage, through settings.py.
• a "return to site" link.

First install the module, preferably in a virtual environment. It can be installed from PyPI:

pip install django-fluent-dashboard

Or the current folder can be installed:

pip install .

Next, create a project which uses the CMS:

cd ..
django-admin.py startproject fluentdemo

It should have the following settings:

INSTALLED_APPS += (
    'fluent_dashboard',

    # enable the admin
    'admin_tools',     # for staticfiles in Django 1.3
    'admin_tools.theming',
    'admin_tools.menu',
    'admin_tools.dashboard',
    'django.contrib.admin',
)

ADMIN_TOOLS_INDEX_DASHBOARD = 'fluent_dashboard.dashboard.FluentIndexDashboard'
ADMIN_TOOLS_APP_INDEX_DASHBOARD = 'fluent_dashboard.dashboard.FluentAppIndexDashboard'
ADMIN_TOOLS_MENU = 'fluent_dashboard.menu.FluentMenu'

Note that some admin_tools applications are optional, yet recommended to have the full experience of the module.

In urls.py:

urlpatterns += patterns('',
    url(r'/admintools/', include('admin_tools.urls')),
)

The database tables for admin_tools can be created afterwards:

./manage.py syncdb
./manage.py migrate    # If South is installed

The FLUENT_DASHBOARD_APP_ICONS setting is a dictionary that allows you to define extra icons for your own modules, and overwrite default settings. For example:

FLUENT_DASHBOARD_APP_ICONS = {
    'auth/user': "user.png"
}

The icon is expected to be 48x48 pixels. The icon name is treated in 3 different formats:

• Absolute URLs are passed as-is.
• Icon names with a / character, are relative to the STATIC_URL (or MEDIA_URL for Django 1.2).
• Icon names without any path information, are relative to the current theme folder, e.g. STATIC_URL/fluent_dashboard/themename/

The FLUENT_DASHBOARD_APP_GROUPS setting defines which applications are grouped. For example:

FLUENT_DASHBOARD_APP_GROUPS = (
    (_('CMS'), {
        'models': (
            'cms.*',
            'pages.*',
            'fiber.*',
        ),
        'module': 'CmsAppIconList',
        'collapsible': False,
    }),
    (_('Interactivity'), {
        'models': (
            'django.contrib.comments.*',
            'form_designer.*'
            'threadedcomments.*',
            'zinnia.*',
        ),
    }),
    (_('Administration'), {
        'models': (
            'django.contrib.auth.*',
            'django.contrib.sites.*',
            'google_analytics.*',
            'registration.*',
        ),
    }),
    (_('Applications'), {
        'models': ('*',),
        'module': 'AppList',
        'collapsible': True,
    }),
)

Details about these options, and additional settings are explained in the documentation.