Installation

This document assumes you are familiar with basic Python and Django development and their tools. If not, please read up on pip, virtualenv, and virtualenvwrapper first. A basic understanding is sufficient.

Requirements

  • Python 2.7, 3.3, or 3.4

All other dependencies are resolved by the django Organice installer. Most of those dependencies are intentionally not pinned on their version number to allow a liberal upgrade path. This means you will get more up-to-date packages installed, but they may break your setup or not install at all.

Confirmed, working dependencies are documented in the History for each release. If anything goes wrong during the installation described below try installing those requirements in your virtual environment before you install django-organice:

$ pip install -r docs/requirements.txt

Installing django Organice

  1. We recommend preparing a virtual environment for running django Organice:

    $ mkvirtualenv example
    $ workon example
    

    The prompt will change to something like (example)~$ to reflect that your new virtual environment is active.

  2. The easiest way is using pip for installation:

    $ pip install django-organice
    

    This will pull the latest django Organice package from the Internet and install all dependencies automatically.

    If you’re a developer you may want to run django Organice with the latest sources: (don’t do this as a user)

    $ git clone https://github.com/Organice/django-organice.git
    $ cd django-organice
    $ python setup.py install
    

    or, alternatively, using pip:

    $ pip install git+https://github.com/Organice/django-organice.git#egg=django-organice
    
  3. Install the adapter suitable for your database (PostgreSQL psycopg2, MySQL MySQL-python, Oracle cx_Oracle, etc.), e.g.

    $ pip install psycopg2
    

    The Django project recommends PostgreSQL.

Note

You can skip this step if you decide to use SQLite, e.g. for evaluation purposes.

  1. Run the Organice setup command to create your new project: (e.g. example)

    $ organice-setup example
    
  2. Edit your settings in example/settings/common.py, example/settings/develop.py, etc. See the Django documentation on settings if you’re not familiar with it. The develop settings are used by your project by default (local development), common is included in all profiles.

  3. Initialize your database:

    $ python manage.py organice bootstrap
    

    This will prepare the database and add some sample content. If you’d rather wish to start with a clean database run to migrate only instead:

    $ python manage.py migrate
    
  4. Start your Django project:

    $ python manage.py runserver
    

    You can now point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ and start developing your project locally.

Note

If you’re planning to create your content locally make sure you use the same database engine for local development and production. Your plan of moving the whole database content from development to production will give you major headaches otherwise. And, use Sqlite for evaluating only!

Initial Configuration

  1. Follow the instructions given to you by the django Organice installer organice-setup after setup has completed. You have to adapt some values in your project settings!

  2. If you want your site to use a language other than English, or you want to use several languages: Adapt the values of LANGUAGE_CODE and LANGUAGES, and set USE_I18N = True in your project settings.

  3. After installation django Organice is configured, but unless you ran the bootstrap management command the database is blank without any content. You can add some sample content and other data running one or all of the following commands:

    $ python manage.py organice initauth  # prepare social auth provider configuration
    $ python manage.py organice initcms   # add pages for your website
    $ python manage.py organice initblog  # add blog categories and posts
    
  4. Alternatively, add your first pages, blog posts, and newsletter data manually:

    • Add some pages and navigation in the Django administration at Cms > Pages, and publish your changes.
    • Surf your new website, and fill your new pages with content using the front-end editing feature.
    • Surf to /blog/ on your website, and start adding Blog posts.
    • Add a user in the Django administration at Newsletter > Contacts.
    • Add localhost (or appropriate server) to Newsletter > SMTP servers.
    • To allow subscribing from the website (from /newsletter/subscribe) add a list to Newsletter > Mailing lists.
    • Finally, add your first newsletter to Newsletter > Newsletters.
    • For adding templates to Emencia Newsletter please consult the related section in the TinyMCE 3.x documentation.
    • To add a link page simply use the “bookmarks” template for a page. You have to add categories and links in the Django Admin. (NOTE: This feature may be replaced by an integration of social bookmarking services in future.)
  5. For sending newsletters to work you must configure a cronjob polling on python manage.py send_newsletter every half an hour. If that was just Greek to you go ask your server admin for help. She knows!

Deployment to Production

During the installation organice-setup prepared 3 different environments that help you with deployment:

example
├── settings
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── common.py
│   ├── develop.py
│   ├── staging.py
│   └── production.py

This modularized setup is described in Solution 2 of Tommy Jarnac’s blog on Django settings best practices [1]. The develop settings are active by default (for local development), common is included by all profiles.

For deployment to environments other than develop the settings module location must be overridden by setting the Django environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE. For example, if you use Apache as your Django web server adapt your Apache configuration file for example with:

SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE example.settings.production

Note

To test different settings locally you can start the Django webserver with the --settings option:

$ python manage.py runserver --settings=example.settings.staging

Finally, make sure you also have consulted the deployment checklist of the Django project and follow their best practices.

[1]David Cramer from DISQUS has described a similar solution at http://justcramer.com/2011/01/13/settings-in-django/