Intro

This is a Simple yet highly customisable CMS starter project, built with Django 4.2 and Python 3.10. Mainly focusing on making things easy enough to be extended, but also being able to provide an immediate CMS experience without the need for huge modification. Feel free to use it as a starting point.

Live site demo

Whatever Boardgame Note

Features

• Build with the concept of Page, Post, Album and Writer
• Make use of Django's admin panel for content management
• Beautiful font with Google Font
• CSS Styling with Django Tailwind
• Richtext Editor and image upload capability with Django CKEditor

Setup

1. Clone this repo and switch to that directory in the terminal.
2. Create Python venv to avoid dependency conflict.

python -m venv .venv

3. Start the python venv

source .venv/bin/activate # If you are using Linux
.venv\scripts\activate # If you are using Windows

4. Install dependencies. In case you are having trouble installing mysqlclient, refer to https://pypi.org/project/mysqlclient/ for the required headers and libraries.

pip install -r requirements.txt

5. Copy db.cnf.example and name it db.cnf. Modify this file with your DB connection info. Don't forget to create the desired database by yourself first.
6. Modify cms_starter/settings.py according to your environment and requirements, especially NPM_BIN_PATH and MEDIA_ROOT.
7. Execute the following command to create the necessary tailwind CSS assets

python manage.py tailwind init
python manage.py tailwind install

8. Create DB Tables. Check your db setting in db.cnf if you encounter errors.

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

9. Start the Tailwind auto build services

python manage.py tailwind start

10. Open a new terminal, switch to repo, start the python venv (refer to step 3), and execute the following command to start the Django development server

python manage.py runserver

Data Preparation

1. Create an admin account

python manage.py createsuperuser

2. Use your admin account to login to the system. The default admin panel is located at http://localhost:8000/admin/

3. Create the pages with specific slugs. Remember to tick the 'published' checkbox.

Page	Slug	Comment
Home	home	Home page
About	about-us	About Us
Contact	contact-us	Contact Us

If that is not what you need, feel free to modify the links in theme/templates/base.html

4. Create a group named 'Writer' for writers. You can grant every permissions that start with cms, except 'cms | pages', 'cms | page image' and 'cms | profile'. For 'cms | profile', you can grant 'cms | profile | Can change profile' and 'cms | profile | Can view profile'. A writer can only see and modify his profile in the admin panel.

5. Create accounts for the writers in the 'User' section of the admin panel. Don't forget to add them to the 'Writer' group. Also please check 'Staff status' in the panel or they woun't be able to login to the admin portal.

6. Writers can log in to the admin panel with their account and perform a limited number of actions. They can modify their profile and password in the admin panel as well.

Deployment

Read and understand https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/howto/deployment/checklist/ first.

In cms_starter/settings.py, remark the settings in "Env - Local" section. Un-remark the settings in "Path - Production" section. Change the values according to your environment.

You may need to change ALLOWED_HOSTS, CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS and INTERNAL_IPS as well.

Transfer the code to the target machine.

Setup the python env(venv) just like how you did in the Setup procedures.

Instead of starting the tailwind CSS building server, you now build the CSS by using the following command

python manage.py tailwind build

Copy the static files to the STATIC_ROOT

python manage.py collectstatic

The compiled assets should be ready in the STATIC_ROOT that you have specified in cms_starter/settings.py.

Finally, instead of starting the development server in step 10, start the gunicorn production server in the project root.

# If you want to see the output
gunicorn cms_starter.wsgi

# Or if you want to run it in daemon
gunicorn cms_starter.wsgi --daemon

Settings

Please refer to cms_starter/settings.py

Assets Directory

• Static Assets are located in the static folder
• Files are uploaded to the media folder by default

Template

Templates files are located at theme/template

Additional CSS

• Additional CSS rules are written in theme/static_src/styles.css
• Tailwind CSS config files are located at theme/static_src

Admin Models

Please refer to cms/admin.py

Views

• Refer to cms/views.py for CMS view
• HTTP 404 views are defined at cms_starter/views.py and cms_starter/urls.py

Utils

Utils are stored at cms_starter/utils.py

Models

All models are stored in cms/models.py

Page

Field	Type	Required	Unique
title	CharField	Y
content	TextField	Y
published	BooleanField	Y
slug	CharField	Y	Y
parent_page	FK('self')		Y
created_at	DateTimeField	Y
modified_at	DateTimeField	Y
child_pages	Ref('self')
images	M2M('Image')

ArticleCategory

Field	Type	Required	Unique
name	CharField	Y
cover_image	ImageField
description	TextField
slug	CharField	Y	Y
articles	M2M('Article')

Article

Field	Type	Required	Unique
title	CharField	Y
cover_image	ImageField
summary	CharField
content	TextField
reference_url	CharField
youtube_video_id	CharFieldY
slug	CharField	Y	Y
created_by	FK(User)	Y
created_at	DateTimeField	Y
modified_at	DateTimeField	Y
published	BooleanField	Y
categories	Ref('ArticleCategory')
tags	Ref('Tag')
images	M2M('Image')

Tag

Field	Type	Required	Unique
name	CharField	Y
articles	M2M('Article')

Album

Field	Type	Required	Unique
name	CharField	Y
slug	CharField	Y	Y
published	BooleanField	Y
created_at	DateTimeField	Y
created_by	FK('User')	Y
cover_image	ImageField
short_description	CharField
description	TextField
album_images	Ref('AlbumImage')

Image

Field	Type	Required	Unique
image	ImageField	Y
caption	CharField	Y
published	BooleanField	Y
articles	M2M('Article')
pages	M2M('Page')

AlbumImage (One Image to One AlbumImage)

Field	Type	Required	Unique
image	O2O('Image')	Y	Y
album	FK('Album')	Y
display_order	IntegerField	Y

ArticleTag (Article <- M2M -> Tag)

Field	Type	Required	Unique
article	FK('Article')	Y	*
tag	FK('Tag')	Y	*

ArticleImage (Article <- M2M -> Image)

Field	Type	Required	Unique
article	FK('Article')	Y
image	FK('Image')	Y	Y
display_order	IntegerField	Y

PageImage (Page <- M2M -> Image)

Field	Type	Required	Unique
page	FK('Page')	Y
image	FK('Image')	Y	Y
display_order	IntegerField	Y

Profile (One Profile to One User, accessed by user.profile)

Field	Type	Required	Unique
user	O2O('User')	Y	Y
nickname	CharField	Y	Y
title	CharField
avatar	ImageField
bio	TextField
location	CharField

URL Pattern

All url patterns are defined in cms/urls.py

Pattern	View	Name	Filter / Select Options
/	views.index	index	Redirect to /page/home
/page/str:slug/	views.page	page
/articles/	views.articles	articles	q: keyword, wrtier: nickname, tag:slug, category: slug, page: n
/articles/int:id-str:slug	views.article	article
/albums/	views.albums	albums	page: n
/albums/int:id-str:slug	views.album	album
/writers	views.writers	writers
/writers/int:id-str:nickname	views.writer	writer

License

The MIT License