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Python: How to setup Django in a Virtual Environment

In this article, we will show you how to setup Django in a virtual environment.

1.) Log into your account via SSH.

2.) Run the following to setup our export project name. Make sure you change “myproject” to the project name you wish to use.

export PROJECTNAME="myproject"

3.) Run the following to setup your local path

cd
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
. .bashrc

4.) Then, you will need to set up a symlink for the python 2.6 installation on the server in our local installation folder:

cd ~/.local/bin; ln -s /usr/local/bin/python2.6 python

5.) Now you can download and unpack virtualenv into the ~/src folder:

mkdir ~/src; cd ~/src; curl -O https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv/virtualenv-1.9.tar.gz; tar xzf virtualenv-1.9.tar.gz; cd virtualenv-1.9

6.) Now you can create a folder called site-packages and start the installation for virtualenv:

mkdir -p $HOME/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/
python setup.py install --prefix=~/.local
cd ~; virtualenv venv --distribute

7.) Enter the virtualenv shell (you will see a “(venv)” at the beginning of your prompt):

. venv/bin/activate

8.) From this shell you can now proceed on installing Django, flup and MySQL-python, then exit the shell:

pip install Django==1.4.5
pip install flup
pip install MySQL-python
deactivate

9.) Now you can start you django project:

django-admin.py startproject $PROJECTNAME

10.) Then you will need to set up your .htaccess and index files for Django:

cd ~/public_html
vi .htaccess

• Press INSERT on your keyboard and copy/paste the following content:

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.fcgi/\$1 [QSA,L]

• Press ESCAPE and then type :wq! to write the file and exit.

vi index.fcgi

• Press INSERT on your keyboard and copy/paste the following content (be sure to replace user and projectname with you username and project name):

#!/home/USER/venv/bin/python
USER='USER'
PROJECTNAME='PROJECTNAME'

import sys, os
from django.core.servers.fastcgi import runfastcgi

packages_path = os.path.join('/home', USER, 'venv/lib/python2.6/site-packages')
site_path = os.path.join('/home', USER)

sys.path.insert(0, packages_path)
sys.path.insert(0, site_path)

os.chdir(site_path)

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = PROJECTNAME + '.settings'
runfastcgi(method='threaded', daemonize='false')

• Press ESCAPE and then type :wq! to write the file and exit.

11.) All that’s left is to set executable permissions on index.fcgi:

chmod +x index.fcgi

And that’s it! Now you can visit your site in your browser and start customizing it