I keep migrating django projects from one provider to another. Everytime, I have to look up the same steps. So I decided to write them down here. It is a bit of a long post that contains various commands and sample config files, but I hope it will be useful to someone.

I’m assuming by now, you already created a new instance and is able to ssh into it.

Install/Update Server Dependencies

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade

PostgreSQL

Note: I install postgres inside the server, you can use RDS or some external service as well.

Install and Manage your own Postgres Server.

NGINX

Installing NGINX, which will be used to serve static assets (css, js, images) and also to run the Django application behind a proxy server:

sudo apt-get -y install nginx

Supervisor

I deploy different django projects (usually small scale, not much traffic) on the same server. To manage all of those I use Supervisor. It’s good for single project as well. But if you want you can look for other ways to manage your project.

Install

sudo apt-get -y install supervisor

Enable and start the Supervisor

sudo systemctl enable supervisor
sudo systemctl start supervisor

Install Virtual Environment

I use simple requirements.txt file to install and manage the dependencies. You can use pipenv or poetry as well.

sudo apt-get -y install python3-virtualenv

Install Python

Note: I’ll be installing and using python3.8 due to some old dependencies.

Install Python

Clone/Set up the project

cd into the directory where you want to clone the project and run:

git clone https://github.com/101Loop/HisabKitab-BE.git  # replace with your project url

Create/Manage your virtual environment

cd into the directory where you cloned the project and run:

Create a virtual environment

cd HisabKitab-BE/  # replace with your project directory
virtualenv -p python3.8 .venv

• .venv is the name of the virtual environment. You can use any name you want.
• -p is for python version.
• I’m using python3.8, you can use any version you want.
• If you don’t specify the python version, it will use the default python version.

Activate the virtual environment

source .venv/bin/activate

Install the dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Update settings or change config files as per your need

• I’m using django-environ to manage the environment variables.
• I’ll just copy my sample.env file to .env and update the values.
• You can use any other method to manage the environment variables.

Check if everything is working fine

Migrate the database

python manage.py migrate  # to run the migrations

• Usually this is not required, since we’re migrating the database from the old server.
• Checkout how to take dump and restore postgres db.

Collect Static Files

python manage.py collectstatic  # to collect the static files

Run the server

python manage.py runserver

• If this is working fine, you can stop the server by pressing ctrl + c.

Configure Gunicorn

Note: Check this out for more details. Deploying Gunicorn

• First install Gunicorn if not already installed.

  pip install gunicorn  # make sure you're in the virtual environment
  

Note: Go outside the project directory and run the following commands.

• Create a directory for storing logs for debugging.

  mkdir logs
  mkdir logs/hisabkitab  # to store logs for hisabkitab
  

• Create a directory for storing the socket files.

  mkdir sockets
  

• I usually create a directory named run_scripts that contains all the gunicorn scripts to run the projects.

  mkdir run_scripts
  

• Create a file named <product_name>_gunicorn.sh inside the run_scripts directory. (Not necessary to create inside the run_scripts directory, you can create anywhere you want.)

  touch run_scripts/hisabkitab_gunicorn.sh  # you can use any name
  

• Copy the content from this Gunicorn Config and paste it in the file you just created. Make sure to update the values as per your need.

• Make the file executable

  chmod u+x run_scripts/hisabkitab_gunicorn.sh
  

Configure Supervisor

• Create a new Supervisor configuration file.

  sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/backend.conf
  

• Copy the content from this Supervisor Config and paste it in the file you just created. Make sure to update the values as per your need.
• Reread Supervisor configuration files and make the new program available.

  sudo supervisorctl reread
  sudo supervisorctl update
  

• Check status

  sudo supervisorctl status hisabkitab_supervisor  # use your own program name
  

  hisabkitab_supervisor            RUNNING   pid 9698, uptime 22:52:48
  

  Pro Tip: By running sudo supervisorctl status you can see the status of all your programs.
• To update the source code of the running application, pull the latest code using git pull, update requirements (if required) and run the following command.

  sudo supervisorctl restart hisabkitab_supervisor  # use your own program name
  

Configure Nginx

• Add a new configuration file named hisabkitab.conf inside /etc/nginx/sites-available/:

  sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/hisabkitab.conf
  

• Copy the content from this Nginx Config and paste it in the file you just created. Make sure to update the values as per your need.
• Create a symbolic link to the sites-enabled directory to enable the site.

  sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/hisabkitab.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
  

• Test the configuration for syntax errors.

  sudo nginx -t
  

• Reload Nginx.

  sudo service nginx restart
  

Configure Certbot (Let’s Encrypt)

• Install Certbot

  sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
  

• Run the following command to get the certificate.

  sudo certbot --nginx
  

• Follow the instructions on the screen to get the certificate for the required domain.
• You can also use the following command to get the certificate.
• This will automatically redirect all the traffic from http to https.

  sudo certbot --nginx -d <domain_name> -d www.<domain_name>
  

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed 🚀 your Django application on the server. It should be running via https.