Django needs a one-click installation routine for shared hosting providers

[orestis@…]

Django is picking up steam, but installing it on a mainstream shared hosting provider (such as DreamHost) is something of a pain.

I propose that some kind of script should be created that makes all the necessary steps of installing/creating a Django app on a shared host, including creating a demo app that tests the environment. This will ease the problems on the mailing list that are actually django configuration errors.

Also, error handling between django/flup/FastCGI is a mess. Random 500 server errors, the error log is redirected to apache's error log. This is a problem, as minor errors (like missing favicons, robots.txt) seem to cause trouble to FastCGI processes, resulting to unstable apps.

Also, most hosts seem to kill sleeping processes, or prevent the spawning of more processes above a certain limited. This should be a setting in Django/flup, ie. how many processes to spawn. Maybe a periodic restart (using cron jobs?) of fastcgi processes is needed too.

[Simon G. <dev@…>]

Accepted as part of the long-term wishlist.

[Jarek Zgoda]

Don't think it's even remotely possible. I hosted my site on 3 various shared hosting sites and literally everyone was smart enough to have its own procedure of "getting Django working".

[Chris Beaven]

I think this is a pipe-dream too, but let's push to someday/maybe.

[alexarsh5@…]

django app install procedure for fresh ubuntu

[anonymous]

I added django app install procedure for fresh ubuntu. My app directory name is mx30. It can be replaced with any other.
The script has --help option and it was checked on Ubuntu server and desktop 8.04. Hope it can be usefull.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Several specialized hosting providers — that didn't exist when this ticket was opened — are building entire toolchains to resolve this problem.

Several ways of deploying Django are described in the documentation. We can make targeted changes to improve one use case or another. But a blanket ticket like this isn't useful.