Features¶

Major components of django Organice are:

• Django Web framework
• full-featured content management (django CMS)
• full-featured versatile blog (Zinnia, cmsplugin)
• events with event calendar (via Zinnia)
• flexible contact pages (cmsplugin)
• link collection pages
• full-featured newsletter (Emencia)
• user profiles (userena)
• multi-language support
• multiple websites support
• database support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and more

Features on the roadmap include:

• social login (Python Social Auth)
• group spaces with automatic mailing list (group_name@yoursite.tld)
• issue list / task management
• documentation area / wiki (probably by use of CMS functionality)
• discussion forum / Q&A board (Askbot, Misago)
• content download for magazine generation
• unobtrusive, integrated, transparent document and asset management
• DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, etc. integration
• fully integrated search (Haystack)
• web analytics respecting your privacy (Piwik)
• live chat or chat integration

Who is using django Organice?¶

Examples of websites running django Organice:

• Kreuzlingen Rudolf Steiner school

Download and Contributions¶

Official repositories: (kept in sync)

1. Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/bittner/django-organice
2. GitHub: https://github.com/bittner/django-organice

Getting Help¶

• Documentation is available at http://docs.organice.io
• Questions? Please use StackOverflow. Tag your questions with django-organice.
• Found a bug? Please use either the Bitbucket or GitHub issue tracker (you choose)

Requirements¶

• Python 2.6 or higher

All other dependencies are resolved by the django Organice installer.

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 git@github.com:bittner/django-organice.git
$ cd django-organice
$ python setup.py install

or, alternatively, using pip:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/bittner/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.

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

   $ organice-setup example

5. 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.

6. Initialize your database and start rocking:

   $ python manage.py syncdb --migrate
   $ 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. Add your first pages, blog posts, and newsletter data:

• 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.

4. 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

Content Management¶

Editing your website is not much different from surfing the web. When you’re logged in to your website you will have the django CMS toolbar on top of the page. Slide the “Edit mode” button to the “ON” state, and some elements of the page you’re currently on start having additional toolbars to add and edit content in those areas.

You can safely modify content on the page without the website to change. Only you can see the changes, and only as long as you are in Edit mode. When you’re happy with the changes press the blue “Publish” button on the django CMS toolbar to make your version visible to the world.

For more technical tasks like creating a navigation structure, adding pages, etc. the django CMS toolbar redirects you to the Django administration interface. Want to have an upfront first impression before using it? Check out the (slightly outdated) django CMS video on frontend-editing.

Blog¶

Writing and publishing interesting articles now and then is called “blogging”. It’s very similar to the usual editing of your website, but still it’s different because you get more features as a natural add-on: Categories, tagging, comments, publication dates, archives (yearly, monthly, daily), related entries, RSS feeds, etc.

On your website you simply go to the Blog area, and click on the “Add” link, which is available when you’re logged in. In the blog entry editor you have all functionality you already know from the content management section. Modifying existing blog entries works identical to the usual content changes on your website with the exception of publishing, which is not available with an intermediate draft step: All your changes are immediately visible online.

Note that in django Organice we also use the blog functionality for other use cases that are very similar to the usual blogging, such as event agendas, job postings, press releases, download lists, etc.

Newsletter¶

Sending out news or updates to a circle of friends or customers is managed by the Newsletter component, which is available from the Django administration interface when you’re logged in to your website. Simply click on “Admin > Site Administration” on the django CMS toolbar, and go to the Newsletter section in Django administration.

This component has a couple of powerful features. It’s best explained having you watch the interesting French overview video from the Emencia website.

Help Wanted¶

• Writing tests
• Translations (blog posts, documentation, user interface)

Bumping Versions, Package, Release¶

As for the version numbers of django Organice we use Semantic Versioning.

Software Alternatives¶

In alphabetical order.

• Bitrix Intranet (PHP, commercial, ships with source code)
• Coyo (Java/Play, commercial, ships with source code)
• Microsoft SharePoint + Yammer [1] (.NET et al., commercial)

Cloud Competitors¶

In alphabetical order.

• Bitrix24.com / Bitrix24.de [1]
• Igloo

0.1¶

• Initial release
• Based on Django 1.5.5, django CMS 2.4.3, Zinnia blog 0.13, Emencia newsletter 0.3.dev
• A more natural i18n mechanism than vanilla Django, no language prefix for default language
• Setup script with project generation, deployment settings, custom templates, Bootstrap 3