This is post is to help newbies who are moving their existing Django app from Windows to WebFaction - it basically goes over the stumbling blocks I encountered in this process:

1. INSTALL DJANGO
In case you didn't ask for Django to be installed as an app, do it now:
a. In the Webfaction control panel, go "Websites/domains" and select "Application"
b. Click the little icon to add an application, and select Django - use the name "django" to following along...
c. go "Websites/domains" and select "websites". Assign your application to your domain.

2. UPLOAD YOUR EXISTING PROJECT
Now use an FTP (or SFTP) client to view the files on your account. User/pass are either the same as control panel, or set up in control panel.
You should see a "webapps" directory which contains a "django" directory, which contains "apache2" and "myproject". "myproject" is the name of sample django project created by WebFaction's tool. To use your own project name, do the following:
a. Copy your projects files under the "django" directory, so that this directory now contains three directories: "apache", "myproject" and "my_existing_project" (for example).
b. To tell apache to serve your application, edit the file /apache2/conf/httpd.conf and change the following line:

    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE myproject.settings

to

    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE my_existing_project.settings

3. SERVE STATIC CONTENT
If you're serving static content (images) and you used the Django built-in view to serve them (i.e. a line like this in urls.py:
(r'^images/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': 'c:/djangocode/myproject/main/images/'}),
you'll want to change this now.
a. In control panel go "websites/applications" | "applications"
b. create a new application of type "Static/CGI/PHP". The name is the directory of the content, eg. "images" or "media"
c. edit your httpd.conf file again and add the following lines at the end. This tells apache not to use Django to serve your files:

<Location "/images">
    SetHandler None
</Location>

(where "/images" is the directory name of your static content - change as appropriate)
d. In your Django code, get rid of the URL config line mentioned above. Your files will be served by Apache without Django being involved. Leaving this line in gives a cryptic "proxy error, access denied" in WebFaction.

d. select "websites/applications" | "websites"
and add your new application to your existing website, along with the directory "/images" (for example)

4. DATABASE
You need to create your database in control panel by selecting "databases" | "add" and then modify your settings.py file to match the new database settings (type, user, pass). I only tried with MySQL and it all just worked. After changing settings.py you need to do a syncdb:

Now use an SSH client to access your account. PuTTY works fine for me (free download, search for it). Type in your site address and press "connect". Username and password are either the same as control panel or as you set them up. 
i. Move into your django project directory:
"cd webapps"
"cd django"
"cd myproject" (or whatever your project is called)

ii. Run the command:
python2.4 manage.py syncdb
(the "python2.4" is to run the version of python with Django, rather than the default install on Red Hat linux)

You should be able to import your existing db data by doing a backup of your database (which creates a file with a big SQL statement) and then running the SQL statement on your new database. WebFaction provides phpMyAdmin for MySql which is pretty straightforward to use.

5. FIRING IT UP
Now use an SSH client to access your account. PuTTY works fine for me (free download, search for it). Type in your site address and press "connect". Username and password are either the same as control panel or as you set them up. Move into the apache2 directory
"cd webapps"
"cd django"
"cd apache2"

and type the following command

./start

the response should be:

Started

6. ADMIRE YOUR SITE
Hopefully this all worked more or less and I haven't forgotten any of the crucial steps. To restart your server (necessary after changes to settings.py and other things), use the following command from the apache2 directory:

./restart

the response should be:

Restarted

7. DJANGO ADMIN
To get the Django admin to look nice, you'll need to create a static content directory (see instructions above) called "media" and copy the following directories and files into it:
C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\media

Last edited by rohan (2007-05-07 20:18:15)