The Slides, In Detail

I'd assume you are using a *nix-like environment. The commands work for Ubuntu 12.04 but adapting them for your distro of choice should be trivial.

Help! I'm getting all sorts of weird errors installing MySQL-python!

Yep. It's really not as easy as it looks. Here's how I do it:

1. Install MySQL dev headers: sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-python.
2. If you don't have it yet, you may also need Python's dev headers: sudo apt-get install python-dev.
3. Pip should install fine now: pip install MySQL-python.
   • MySQL-python requires a more-recent distribute library than the one that ships by default in Ubuntu 12.04 . I ran into all sorts of problems upgrading distribute because, apparently, my global Python environment (the one outside virtualenvs) uses the shipped version of distribute. I just had to upgrade the distribute in my global Python environment.
     Warning: In case the distribute update you are installing is not backwards-compatible, this may break some things; proceed at your own risk.

You recommend not using sqlite for trying out Django CMS. Can I use DB engine x?

As long as it supports ALTER TABLE statements, you're good. But then, there's also the question of having a Django DB backend for your flavor of choice...

Where to now?

Check this out!