MindfulBlog

Mindful is a blog website for general topics. Whatever tickles the writer's mind.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Minimum Requirements
• Quickstart
• Database SetUp
• Database Migration
• Deployment

Background

This application is a blog website for expression of ideas and education. The blogs are written by the blog-owner/admin. It has a Reader Authentication functionality as well as Search functionality. The project applies Django's MVT(Model View Templates) architecture. It has a CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) application in which the author can create and edit content and on the otherhand, readers can create comments for the blog posts. The project is written with Function-Based Views (FBV) with focus on core fundamentals which are easy to read, understand and implement. Images uploaded in the project are stored using Amazon AWS S3 buckets helping the project to scale.

Minimum Requirements

This project supports Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and Windows OS with their previous stable releases. It has not been tested on Mac OS.

• Python3
• Django 3.2
• Bootstrap 4.3.1
• PostgreSQL 14.2+
• Heroku CLI
• Git
• AWS S3

Quickstart

$ mkdir mindfulblog
$ cd mindfulblog
$ git init
$ git clone https://github.com/Eugene-Kwaka/MindfulBlog.git
$ cd MindfulBlog
$ sudo apt install python3-pip python3-django
$ sudo apt install python3-venv
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Database Setup

'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
'NAME': ('DB_NAME'),
'USER': ('DB_USER'),
'PASSWORD': ('DB_PASSWORD'),
'HOST': ('DB_HOST'),
'PORT': ('DB_PORT')

Database Migration

$ python3 manage.py makemigrations
$ python3 manage.py migrate

Deployment

We'll deploy our application to Heroku. Heroku is a cloud hosting platform that I have used with Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure with rapid scaling capabilities, offering flexible deployment services for all kinds of applications. Its ease of use makes it particularly suitable for fast development cycles.

$ git init
$ heroku login
$ heroku create <your_app_name>
$ heroku config:set DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1
$ heroku config:set SECRET_KEY=<your_secret_key>
$ heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your_access_key>
$ heroku config:set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your_secret_access>
$ heroku config:set AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=<your_bucket_name>
$ heroku config:set DATABASE_NAME=mindfulblog
$ heroku config:set DATABASE_USER=postgres
$ heroku config:set DEBUG_VALUE=True
$ heroku run python manage.py migrate
$ heroku open #the app should be served in your browser