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Deploying this project to PythonAnywhere

This is a step-by-step guide to deploying this project on PythonAnywhere.

1. Create a PythonAnywhere account

Open a free account and follow the instructions in the deployment guide.

the link above is a referal link and I will benefit financially if you use the link and later use pythonanywhere paid services or you can go to https://www.pythonanywhere.com/

2. Set up a new web app

Go to the Web page your Dashboard and click the Add a new web app button.

  • You can ignore the 'domain name page' for now and just click on the "Next" button. A free account only allows you to use the username.pythonanywhere.com, you can add a custom domain later.
  • Select the "Manual configuration" option and click "Next".
  • Choose the Python version you want to use (the latest version you have available) and click "Next".
  • At the "Manual Configuration" page, click next, we'll set this up manually.

After a short while you will see the app has been created.

3. Create a new virtual environment

While this isn't strictly necessary, it's a good idea to create a new virtual environment for your project.

Go to the "Consoles" tab and start a new bash console.

Run the following command to create a new virtual environment:

mkvirtualenv venv_name

Replace ven_name with the name you want to give your virtual environment.

Run the following command to activate the virtual environment:

workon venv_name

Later on the projects python dependencies will be installed in this virtual environment.

4. Clone the project

Your site needs to be in a Git repository, so you can clone your project from GitHub or GitLab or any other Git repository.

Go to the "Consoles" tab and start a new bash console.

cd into the directory where you want to clone the project, your home directory is a good place to start.

Clone the project by running:

git clone your-newley-forked-repo-url

Replace your-newley-forked-repo-url with the URL of your forked repository.

Change into the project directory by running:

cd your-newley-forked-repo-url

Activate the virtual environment you created in the previous step:

workon venv_name

Install the project dependencies by running: (This will take a few minutes to complete)

pip install -r requirements.txt

Environment variables are stored in a .env file. To be able to use these variables, you need to install the python-dotenv package by running:

pip install python-dotenv

Run the following command to create the database tables:

python manage.py migrate

Run the following command to create a superuser:

python manage.py createsuperuser

Run the following command to collect the static files:

python manage.py collectstatic

5. Create static and media directories

Go to the "Files" tab and click on the directory where you cloned the project.

Create a new directory called static and another called media if they don't already exist.

Your project structure should look something like this:

.git/
app/
docs/
media/ # <-- New directory
scripts/
static/	# <-- New directory
static_src/

Go to the "Web" tab again and under the Static files: section, add the following:

URL: /static/
Directory: /home/username/path-to-your-project/static/

and

URL: /media/
Directory: /home/username/path-to-your-project/media/

Still on the "Web" tab, scroll up to the "Virtualenv" section and add the path to your virtual environment:

/home/username/.virtualenvs/venv_name/

Replace venv_name with the name of your virtual environment name and username with your PythonAnywhere username.

Still on the "Web" tab, scroll up to the "Code" section and update the Source code path to the directory where you cloned the project.

6. Update the wsgi file provied by PythonAnywhere

Go to the "Web" tab and click on the link to the WSGI configuration file. This file will open the file in the editor.

Delete all the content in the file and replace it with the following:

import os
import sys
from dotenv import load_dotenv

# Add the path to your project directory
# replace 'project_name' with your project name
# replace 'username' with your PythonAnywhere username
path = '/home/username/project_name'

load_dotenv(os.path.join(path, '.env'))

if path not in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(path)

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'app.settings.production'

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
application = get_wsgi_application()

Then update the path to your project directory. You can get the full path from the "Files" tab.

Go to the "Files" tab and create a new file called .env in the root of your project directory.

Add the following to the .env file:

DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS=your-pythonanywhere-domain
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=a-secret-key

Replace a-secret-key with a good secret key and your-pythonanywhere-domain with your PythonAnywhere allocted domain name.

Later on, you can add more environment variables to this file if required and if you decide to use a custom domain name, you should add it here in the DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS variable. If you add multiple domain names, separate them with a comma.

Go to the "Web" tab and click the green button to reload your web app.

After a few seconds, the reload should be complete, you can the click on the link at the top of the page to see the live site.

Test the project

You should now log into the Wagtail admin and update the site hostname to match your PythonAnywhere domain name.

Go to the admin page by adding /admin to the end of your site URL.

  • Log in with the superuser credentials you created earlier.
  • Go to the Settings section and update the Site hostname to match your PythonAnywhere domain name, also update the Site port number to 443 to enable HTTPS.

Further development ideas for the project

You should now have a working version of the project deployed on PythonAnywhere capable of handling production traffic. You'll probably wany to use your own domain name and set up HTTPS for the site.

Up to this point the site isn't really that useful, it has a very simple home page and doesn't do much else. Next, you can look at some ideas for further development and start to build out the site with more features.

See the What Next document for ideas on how to expand the project's feature set, improve performance, and make it more user-friendly.