The biggest reason why I chose to go with Python 2.5 at the time was because the MySQL Python (MySQLdb) package didn't support Python 2.6. The 1.2.3c1 release does so that roadblock is lifted.

The instructions are identical - nothing has really changed in that regard. Just change the references from Python 2.5 to 2.6. Here are the links to the versions I'm using successfully:

Python 2.6.4: http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.4/Python-2.6.4.tgz

setuptools 0.6c11: http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.6/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg#md5=bfa92100bd772d5a213eedd356d64086

MySQLdb 1.2.3c1: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python/files/mysql-python-test/1.2.3c1/MySQL-python-1.2.3c1.tar.gz/download

mod_wsgi 2.6: http://modwsgi.googlecode.com/files/mod_wsgi-2.6.tar.gz

Django 1.1.1: http://www.djangoproject.com/download/1.1.1/tarball/

Related posts:

1. Setup Python 2.5, mod_wsgi, and Django 1.0 on CentOS 5 (cPanel)
2. Ruby On Rails and SliceHost Part 1: Initial Setup
3. Getting Started with Django and Python – First Impressions

In a previous post I discussed installing Django and getting it to play nice with Apache 2 on a CentOS 5/cPanel server. Updating to Django 1.02 the latest Django codebase is easy if you followed my previous post, simply do an svn up in your django-trunk directory.

The first item that makes sense to tweak is Django's settings. Editing your settings.py file in your project's root directory is fairly straightforward. Fill in your database settings, adjust your time zone - all that good stuff. Also, if you followed my previous post, you'll want to make a modification to your ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX:

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/admin_media/'

Initially, you'll also want to use the (excellent) built in administrative interface. Add it to your INSTALLED_APPS tuple at the bottom of settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    #...
    'django.contrib.admin'
)

To test your database connectivity and have Django setup tables required by the default apps that are placed in INSTALLED_APPS (including the admin app you just added) run the manage.py syncdb command:

python manage.py syncdb

This brings up an issue I came across. On my server I have a 2nd Python installation (v2.5 for Django development purposes). You'd like to be able to give +x permissions to manage.py and simply do:

./manage.py syncdb

Internally, the shebang of Django's Python files is #!/usr/bin/env python. The developers, knowing that a Python installation could be anywhere on a given system, obviously went the reliable route and utilize /usr/bin/env (which is essentially guaranteed to exist in that location) to search for a Python interpreter in the system's path. However, on a system where your desired Python installation won't be found ahead of the system's default (perhaps, required) installation, running the script directly will cause it to be executed by the wrong Python interpreter.

The composition of a Django web application (site) is: a site is composed of projects which are composed of apps. Apps can be completely decoupled and can be re-used on other projects (and therefor sites). Apps seem to be the functional equivalent of Rails plugins.

Creating your first app is as simple as executing the python manage.py startapp appname command and adding it to your list of INSTALLED_APPS. Personally, the fact that you have to add anything to a list seems cumbersome. Is it not possible to have them placed in a directory by convention that would automatically load them? Perhaps this is due to the fact that you may want to take advantage of certain Django bundled apps, such as auth, admin, etc. In which case it wouldn't make sense to copy them into an "apps" directory under your project root.

After you've created your first app you then create your models. If you have an familiarity with an Object Relation Mapper (ORM) Django's won't come as any surprise. Your models extend Django's built in models.Model class and define both the database fields as properties and the actions as methods.

As the official Django tutorial suggests, it's helpful to overwrite some base model methods with your own custom methods to implement some important functionality. In particular __unicode__(). Internally __str__() calls __unicode__(), so whereas in Python your classes would implement __str__(), in Django you implement __unicode__(). This provides a human readable representation of your object when dealing with the built-in Django admin interface, or the Django shell.

Edit below: It was late when I wrote this, sorry!
It's also worth noting that it was somewhat surprising to me that certain files were created automatically for you with the manage.py startapp command while others weren't (such as models.py). This certainly isn't something awful, just seemed a bit inconsistent. This extends to setting up templates. Again, it's a manual process. You first create the templates directory and then specify it in your project's settings.py file. Couldn't some of this have been automated? If you want to modify Django's built-in admin interface template you have to copy the desired file into your templates directory, manually. Perhaps this just takes some getting used to. Fair enough.

One issue the official Django tutorial didn't touch upon is setting up your projects "home" view (accessing / ). It's simple, your project can define it's own views that can be added to your urls.py file.

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^$', 'myproject.views.index'),
    (r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root),
)

And in your project's views.py file:

from django.http import HttpResponse

def index(request):
        return HttpResponse('Hello, World!')

It also occurred to me that if apps are meant to be decoupled and packageable, and there is only one template directory (all apps template files go in this directory). What IS the process for packaging and deploying an app into another project? MORE manual copying?

SHRUG

That's all for now, I'm sure I'll have plenty more to comment about as I experiment. I do like what I see though and I'm sure I have TONS to learn. Also - please, correct me if I'm mistaken about anything above.

Related posts:

1. Django and Python First Impressions – Part II
2. Setup Python 2.5, mod_wsgi, and Django 1.0 on CentOS 5 (cPanel)
3. Adventures in Django and Python – Part III

Installing Python 2.5 dependencies

Install sqlite3:

$ wget http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.4.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.4
$ cd sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.4.tar.gz
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

Install Python 2.5

Download Python 2.5 source package, unzip, and enter working directory:

$ cd
$ wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.5/Python-2.5.tgz
$ tar xvfz Python-2.5.tgz
$ cd Python-2.5

Configure Python 2.5 so that we're not overwriting the system's python installation:

$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/python2.5 --with-threads --enable-shared

Make and install:

$ make
$ make install

Add an alias to root's .bash_profile:

alias python='/opt/python2.5/bin/python'

Make a symbolic link:

$ ln -s /opt/python2.5/bin/python /usr/bin/python2.5

Configure ld to find your shared libs:

$ cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/opt-python2.5.conf
/opt/python2.5/lib (hit enter)
(hit ctrl-d to return to shell)
$ ldconfig

Test python 2.5 installation:

$ python

You should get an interactive Python 2.5 session like:

Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Nov 9 2008, 23:18:24)
[GCC 4.1.2 20071124 (Red Hat 4.1.2-42)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>>

Hit ctrl-d to exit

Install setuptools:

$ cd
$ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.5/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c9-py2.5.egg
$ sh setuptools-0.6c9-py2.5.egg --prefix=/opt/python2.5

Install MySQLdb package:

$ cd
$ wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mysql-python/MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ cd MySQL-python-1.2.2
$ python setup.py build
$ python setup.py install

Verify Python 2.5 Installation:

$ cd
$ python
Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Nov 9 2008, 23:18:24)
[GCC 4.1.2 20071124 (Red Hat 4.1.2-42)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sqlite3
>>> import MySQLdb
>>>

Installing mod_wsgi

What is mod_wsgi?

The aim of mod_wsgi is to implement a simple to use Apache module which can host any Python application which supports the Python WSGI interface. The module would be suitable for use in hosting high performance production web sites, as well as your average self managed personal sites running on web hosting services.

Why mod_wsgi?

The consensus seems to be that mod_wsgi is the prefered Apache module (as opposed to mod_python). It's stable, less memory intensive, and faster.

Configure mod_wsgi to link with Python 2.5 shared libs:

$ cd /opt/python2.5/lib/python2.5/config
$ ln -s ../../libpython2.5.so .
$ cd
$ wget http://modwsgi.googlecode.com/files/mod_wsgi-2.3.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz mod_wsgi-2.3.tar.gz
$ cd mod_wsgi-2.3
$ ./configure --with-python=/opt/python2.5/bin/python

Make and install:

$ make
$ make install

It’s important to read the mod_wsgi docs on building with shared libs - mod_wsgi should compile to around 250kb.

Confirm that the size of mod_wsgi.so is around 250kb:

$ ls -Al /usr/local/apache/modules/mod_wsgi.so

Add mod_wsgi to Apache 2.x:

With cPanel/WHM you can simply add these lines to your 'Pre-Virtualhost Include' file accessible in WHM:

LoadModule wsgi_module /usr/local/apache/modules/mod_wsgi.so
AddHandler wsgi-script .wsgi

Setup a Django 1.0 test project

Create a new user/domain via WHM/cPanel

Edit users .bash_profile:

alias python='/opt/python2.5/bin/python'
export PYTHONPATH='$PYTHONPATH:/home/username/sites/domain.com'

Create a new project directory:

$ mkdir -p /home/username/sites/domain.com
$ cd /home/username/sites/domain.com
$ svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ django-trunk
$ ln -s django-trunk/django django
$ mkdir .python-eggs
$ chmod 777 .python-eggs
$ /home/username/sites/domain.com/django/bin/django-admin.py startproject testproject
$ chown -R username: /home/username/sites

Create your apps .wsgi script:

$ pico /home/username/public_html/test.wsgi

#!/opt/python2.5/bin/python
import os, sys
sys.path.insert(0,'/home/username/sites/domain.com')
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'testproject.settings'
os.environ['PYTHON_EGG_CACHE'] = '/home/username/sites/domain.com/.python-eggs'
import django.core.handlers.wsgi
application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

$ chown username: /home/username/public_html/test.wsgi

Setup a vhost include (as root)

$ mkdir -p /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/username/domain.com
$ pico /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/username/domain.com/vhost.conf

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
Alias /robots.txt /home/username/sites/domain.com/testproject/media/robots.txt
Alias /site_media /home/username/sites/domain.com/testproject/media
Alias /admin_media /home/username/sites/domain.com/django/contrib/admin/media
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
# See the link below for an introduction about this mod_wsgi config.
# http://groups.google.com/group/modwsgi/browse_thread/thread/60cb0ec3041ac1bc/2c547b701c4d74aa

WSGIScriptAlias / /home/username/public_html/test.wsgi
WSGIDaemonProcess username processes=7 threads=1 display-name=%{GROUP}
WSGIProcessGroup username
WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}
</IfModule>

# This fixes the broken ErrorDocument directive we inherit that breaks auth
# if we use a WSGI app.
ErrorDocument 401 "Authentication Error"
ErrorDocument 403 "Forbidden"

$ /scripts/verify_vhost_includes
$ /scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --user=username

domain.com should now be serving a django site.

To restart a django instance:

$ touch ~/public_html/test.wsgi

Related posts:

1. Setup Python 2.6.4, mod_wsgi 2.6, and Django 1.1.1 on CentOS 5.3 (cPanel)
2. Ruby On Rails and SliceHost Part 1: Initial Setup
3. Installing Ruby Enterprise Edition with Phusion Passenger

Change the default root password

>passwd

Update all yum packages

>yum update

Bring in some standard packages

>yum install wget openssl-devel lynx zlib zlib-devel vixie-cron curl lynx subversion make gcc automake

Install Apache

>yum install httpd

Setup your domain records
http://articles.slicehost.com/2007/10/24/creating-dns-records

Create your VirtualHosts in Apache's httpd.conf
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts
Note: Apache's conf directory will be /etc/httpd/conf. Don't forget to restart Apache after setting up each new vhost:

>service httpd restart

See http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/apache.html for details on how to get Apache and mongrel to play with each other.

Start Apache

>httpd service start

Install MySQL

>yum install mysql mysql-server

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/ for post-installation instructions (setting up initial accounts, etc.)

Install Ruby (1.8.6)

>wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6-p111.tar.gz
>gzip -d ruby-1.8.6-p111.tar.gz
>tar xvf ruby-1.8.6-p111.tar.gz
>cd ruby-1.8.6-p111.tar.gz
>./configure
>make
>make install

Install Ruby Gems (1.0.1)

>wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29548/rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
>tar xvf rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
>cd rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
>ruby setup.rb

Install Rails (2.0.2)

>gem install rails --include-dependencies

Install Mongrel

>gem install mongrel

Optional for phpMyAdmin
Install php

>yum install php

Install php extensions necessary for phpMyAdmin

>yum install php-mcrypt
>yum install php-mbstring

Install phpmyadmin
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/documentation/#setup

Any comments or feedback is appreciated.

Related posts:

1. Installing Ruby Enterprise Edition with Phusion Passenger
2. Setup Python 2.6.4, mod_wsgi 2.6, and Django 1.1.1 on CentOS 5.3 (cPanel)
3. Deployment Using Capistrano / Webistrano via Rails / Phusion Passenger