How to start a Django project in 2012

django_2012.md

(and deploy to Heroku)

First, warm up your system.

$ easy_install pip
$ pip install virtualenv
$ pip install django
$ gem install heroku

Start a project.

$ django-admin.py startproject [myproject]
$ cd !$

Setup virtualenv and start it up.

$ virtualenv --no-site-packages ve
$ source ve/bin/activate

(ve for virtualenv isn't that nice and terse? You can call it whatever you want.)

Create a requirements.txt file and put this stuff in it.

Django
psycopg2
south

(psycopg2 is a PostgreSQL adapter for Python.)

While you're still inside of your virtualenv, load your requirements.

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Put south in your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'south',
    ...

Make .manage.py executable (so you don't have to type python manage.py ... all the time).

$ chmod +x manage.py

Don't forget to add ve to your .gitignore file.

Now go make something awesome.

Deploy to Heroku

$ heroku create --stack cedar
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku run python manage.py syncdb
$ heroku open

Update your database with South and push the changes to Heroku

1. Make changes to your models
2. $ ./manage.py schemamigration [appname] --auto
3. $ ./manage.py migrate [appname]
4. [commit & push changes to heroku]
5. $ heroku run ./manage.py migrate [appname]

Sources

• Deploying Django applications on Heroku
• Part 1: The Basics — South v0.7 documentation
• Getting Started with Django on Heroku/Cedar | Heroku Dev Center

This is a Solutions Log post.

why are you install django at the system level and at the virtualenv level?

@binarydud, Just for the initial setup of a new project. Not necessary, I guess.