nginx

January 2012 update: I use and recommend gunicorn and Nginx for Django projects now.

There's a time when every Django developer has to think about deployment scenarios, when I first did it last year I thought that a setup involving Lighty, Apache, mod_proxy and mod_python was a good choice but my first approach was not the best. I put Apache as the front server, handling requests for Django generated pages and passing, via mod_proxy, requests for static content to Lighty on the back. A setup where Apache had to work even for files that wasn't supposed to serve was a very bad idea.

After many helpful comments and some more reading I realized that it was better having the server for static content on the front and Apache, which still talks to Django, on the back.

I replaced Lighty with nginx, which according to many seems to be more stable, and opted for mod_wsgi instead of mod_python to make Apache talk to Django. mod_wsgi has a lower memory overhead and it's suitable for high performance sites. There's no need for mod_proxy on Apache anymore as nginx is the one in charge of the proxy work now.

This is an easy to follow and very focused guide for developers who know how to handle their servers so I won't consider security issues, memcached, Django installation, databases or basic GNU/Linux, Apache and DNS settings. Of course all of those subjects are important and you should take care of them.

The plan

This guide includes all the steps needed to:

• Setup a domain for your Django project.
• Create a simple directory layout for Django sites.
• Configure Apache with mod_wsgi for Django.
• Configure nginx.
• Serve Django admin media files.
• Turn on the heat and show your greatest and latest Django stuff to the world.

After following all the steps you will have a Django site running with nginx on the front and Apache on the back. nginx will manage all static content and will pass Django requests to Apache and mod_wsgi.

I have tested on three Ubuntu servers (two running 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, and one 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon) but everything should be pretty similar in other GNU/Linux distributions.

Shall we start?