| One thing that I feel is harder than it should be with django is
getting it working with Apache2. Sure the built in webserver is nice
for development, but there comes a time when you need to step up and
use a webserver for development that you can also deploy the site upon.
I have used Apache a lot in the past, but recently I have decided to move over to installing everything the Debian
way, and this will reflect that. I am going to use python2.3, Apache2
and the version of mod_python that is in stable. You can follow the
instructions if you have installed Apache2 and mod_python in otherways
after this step if you wish.
To get Apache2 on Debian with mod_python, simply:
apt-get install apache2apt-get install libapache2-mod-python
For the rest of the tutorial, I am assuming that you have Django
setup correctly, and working with your database. If not, I recommend installing the development version. It is easy to update using SVN
and there are some features that are better than the stable version I
find. Once you have done this you can start to build your site. From
then on you can create your apache virtualhost file:
I have decided to run my django site on a different port, but of
course you can run it on different ipaddresses, and with different
hostheaders. All you need to do is follow the apache 2 documentation
for this. I feel this is already well documented so I will just show
how I did it by running on different ports:
Edit the ports file for apache2 to tell it to listen on more than one port:
vi /etc/apache2/ports.confAdd this line to tell it to listen on port 8000:
Listen 8000Create a new sites file for this new virtual host:
vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/djangositeNow we need to put in the configuration details:
<VirtualHost *:8000><Location "/">SetHandler mod_pythonPythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpythonPythonPath "['/home/tim/dev/projects/'] + sys.path"SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE djangosite.settingsPythonDebug On</Location>Alias /media "/var/www/djangosite/media"<Location "/media/">SetHandler None</Location><LocationMatch "\.(jpg|gif|png)$">SetHandler None</LocationMatch></VirtualHost>
This gives us several things:
Sets up a virtualhost to listen on port 8000.For the virtual host use mod_python.PythonHandler is told to use Django.Our PythonPath is updated with our site files, in my case my django
projects are located in /home/tim/dev/projects/ so this is what I use.
Point this to where your django files are kept.Let django know to use the settings file for this projectThe we setup an alias to serve the media files, as they don’t need
to be served through mod_python we turn the handler off for the /media/
location. I will setup my media files in /var/www/djangosite/mediaFinally tell apache2 not to use mod_python to serve image files.
Now save this file, and enable the site:a2ensite djangositeNow create the webhosting directory, and the symbolic link for the admin directory, and check the permissions:
mkdir /var/www/djangosite/cd /var/www/djangosite/ln -s /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/media/chmod -R 755 /var/www/djangosite
The stop and start apache2 on your server (this is for Debian using init.d scripts, but whatever you do stopping then starting is better than a simple reload)./etc/init.d/apache2 stop; /etc/init.d/apache2 start
Once you have done that, check your site by point a webbrowser to
the the machine that you have apache2 running on, but at port 8000 for
instance if it is a localhost, tryhttp://127.0.0.1:8000.
One thing that I haven’t talked about is where it is best to place
all the files used in creating a django site, and I have yet to read
any documentation about this. This is why in the above I am point it to
a dev subdirectory from my home directory. I don’t think this is a good
idea for a production site, and perhaps it should go in somewhere off
/var.
One thing is for sure, creating seperate directories for media and
the actual files is a good idea, and you if you follow the django
instructions you can take them up on the recommendation of using a
seperate lightweight webserver to just serve these files. |
