Modern Django project template

Opinionated Django project template by en.ig.ma.

• Preconfigured requirements and application settings
• Settings divided into modules (no local_settings.py madness)
• Ready to deploy on Heroku
• Static files compression
• Basic app structure and templates
• Simple dj command that invokes python manage.py <command> from any project directory

Prerequisites

• Python 2.7
• PostgreSQL
• Node.js, npm and lessc for .less development
• AWS S3 storage account (see docs/deploy-on-heroku.rst)

Setup project

Prepare project

Start with creating a new Django project based on this project template:

django-admin.py startproject --template=https://github.com/nigma/django-modern-template/zipball/master <project_name>
cd <project_name>

This will set up and preconfigure your project. Now amend the domain and site name settings in the conf/prod.py``and ``conf/dev.py files and you are almost ready for the first commit.

Note: the startproject command seems to skip the .heroku/collectstatic_disabled source file while copying files from the template. If the .heroku directory is not present in the generated project root directory, just create it manually and add an empty file named collectstatic_disabled:

mkdir .heroku
touch .heroku/collectstatic_disabled

First commit

After configuring the project settings you are ready for the initial commit:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"

Set heroku env

Once your project structure is ready, the next step is to create and configure a heroku instance:

heroku create

dj generate_secret_key --settings=my_site.conf.test
heroku config:add DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=<secret key>

heroku config:add AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<aws access key>
heroku config:add AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<aws secret key>
heroku config:add AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=<aws bucket name>

heroku labs:enable user-env-compile

As well as enable basic addons for database, cache and mail:

heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql:dev
heroku addons:add pgbackups:auto-month
heroku addons:add memcachier:dev
heroku addons:add mailgun:starter
heroku addons:add newrelic:standard

Push and migrate

You should now be ready to deploy your new project to heroku:

git push heroku master
heroku run python manage.py syncdb
heroku run python manage.py migrate

See docs/deploy-on-heroku.rst for more info.

Out of the box

This is what you get: dmt.herokuapp.com

Commercial Support

This project has been created to make Django development faster and follow best practices for own sites and our clients. Contact us at en@ig.ma for your next project.