cookiecutter-django

Cookiecutter Django is a project template for quickly starting a production-ready Django web project. Django is a popular framework for building websites in Python. Normally you begin a new Django project with a bare starter and then spend a lot of time wiring up the same things every time: user accounts, email sending, database settings, security defaults, and so on. This template does that setup for you, so you begin with a fully arranged project instead of an empty shell.

It is built on a separate tool called Cookiecutter, which generates projects from templates by asking you questions. The README walks through an example: say you want to build a Reddit clone. Instead of creating the project by hand and editing dozens of files, you install Cookiecutter and point it at this template. It then prompts you for choices such as the project name, your name and email, which open-source license to use, the time zone, the PostgreSQL database version, the cloud provider, and the email service. After you answer, it produces a ready-to-use Django project matching your selections.

The README lists what the generated project includes. It targets a recent Django and Python version and starts with full test coverage. It comes with the Bootstrap front-end toolkit, settings organized using the 12-Factor approach with environment variables, secure defaults including SSL, separate development and production configurations, user registration, and a custom user model. There is optional Docker support for both development and production, plus instructions for deploying to hosts like Heroku and PythonAnywhere.

Several integrations are optional and chosen during setup, such as serving files from cloud storage services, background task processing with Celery, local email testing with Mailpit, and error tracking with Sentry. The project states some constraints: it uses only maintained third-party libraries, relies on PostgreSQL throughout, and configures everything through environment variables. It is run by volunteers and accepts sponsorship.