id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
20139	Please add a line about ALLOWED_HOSTS requirement in tutorial	Gert van Dijk	nobody	"'''Summary''': Since 1.5 one needs to set the `ALLOWED_HOSTS` to something sane before Django will serve ''anything'' besides an empty HTTP-500 response without ''any'' form of error output. Please include that in the tutorial or provide a message to the admin.

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I'm new to Django and followed the tutorials using Django 1.5. After finishing the tutorial I wasn't able to use the simple project with the Poll app without keeping `DEBUG = True` -- all requests were responded with an ""500 Server Error"". Changing back to `Debug = True` generated the regular debug enabled responses. Creating the `404.html` and `500.html` templates didn't help either.

Even every new empty Django project I started wasn't able to serve other than an empty 500 response, unless I would turn on debug mode again. This totally confused me and it took me quite some time to find the right documentation about it in the [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/checklist/ Deployment Checklist] (only development version). As raising the `SuspicousOperation` Exception isn't logged or reported anywhere running the server in production, I did not have any clue! Moreover, this isn't debug-able for me as a new user as it does not show up with Debug mode on.

This Q&A on StackOverflow illustrates the issue perfectly as well (this saved my day!): [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15128135/django-setting-debug-false-causes-500-error Django: Setting DEBUG = False causes 500 Error]

'''Suggested solution''' 1: Add a small note about this in the [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/intro/tutorial03/#write-a-404-page-not-found-view Tutorial part 3 paragraph ""Write a 404 (page not found) view""] where it's explained about the behaviour of the `DEBUG` value and 404/500 responses. E.g.: ""''Changed in Django 1.5:'' If `DEBUG` is set to `False`, all responses will be an 500 Server Error unless you specify the `ALLOWED_HOSTS` setting in your project's `settings.py`"".

'''Suggested solution''' 2: Whenever starting the server in `DEBUG = False` and `ALLOWED_HOSTS = []`, display a warning on the console (stderr) that no request will be served because of the empty `ALLOWED_HOSTS` setting."	Bug	closed	Documentation	1.5	Normal	duplicate	tutorial security settings		Accepted	0	0	0	0	0	0