Settings

Django supports having multiple different settings files for different contexts. All of the settings files are python files placed in settings/. In general you should not need to edit any of the settings files.

NOTE

Django expects you to have a variable in settings named SECRET_KEY. This is used for things like hashing passwords. It is bad to have a secret key tracked in settings. We have seprate secret keys that we use for the production and staging servers. When you are running the website locally you need to make a secret key for yourself. Since the passwords and other sensative data you are storing locally dosen't matter you can make your secret key anything. Create a file called .env and put in it SECRET_KEY = "whateveryouwant".

Base

base.py contains the base settings that apply to every instance of the website. No matter if you are running the website locally, or in a production context these settings apply. The bulk of our settings live in this file, because there are not many settings that are dependent on the hosting context.

Host

host.py contains the settings that are needed when running on a server, and not your local machine. It extends base.py meaning it has all of the settings defined in base.py and all of the settings defined in host.py.

Production

prod.py contains the settings that are needed for running on our main production website. It builds off of host.py.

Staging

staging.py contains the settings that are needed for running our staging website. It builds off of host.py.

Local

local.py contains the settings that are needed for running the website on your local machine. It builds off of base.py.