Project Structure

The normal Django workflow, as it is described in the official Django tutorial starts a project with the command:

$ django-admin startproject [projectname]

Your project will look like this:

[projectname]/
├── [projectname]/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
└── manage.py

However, the startproject-command takes an optional argument template which can be used to specify a project template to be used for project creation (see `Django documentation <https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/django-admin/#startproject`_).

The template-argument works with paths on your local machine, but also supports URLs. So you can easily fetch this skeleton from GitHub using this command:

$ django-admin startproject --template=https://github.com/Mischback/django-project-skeleton/archive/master.zip [projectname]

Your project will look like this:

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── [projectname]/              <- Django root
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings/
│   │   ├── common.py
│   │   ├── development.py
│   │   ├── i18n.py
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   └── production.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
├── apps/
│   └── __init__.py
├── configs/
│   ├── apache2_vhost.sample
│   └── README
├── doc/
│   ├── Makefile
│   └── source/
│       └── *snap*
├── manage.py
├── README.rst
├── run/
│   ├── media/
│   │   └── README
│   ├── README
│   └── static/
│       └── README
├── static/
│   └── README
└── templates/
    ├── base.html
    ├── core
    │   └── login.html
    └── README

Django Root

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── [projectname]/              <- Django root
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings/
│   │   ├── common.py
│   │   ├── development.py
│   │   ├── i18n.py
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   └── production.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
└── *snap*

The Django root directory will be named according to the project name you specified in django-admin startproject [projectname]. This directory is the project’s connection with Django.

[projectname]/settings/
Instead of a plain settings-file, the configuration is split into several files in this Python module. For an in-depth documentation of these settings see Settings.
[projectname]/urls.py
The root URL configuration of the project. The only configured set of urls is the admin-application. For background information see The Django Book Chapter 3 and The Django Book Chapter 8.
[projectname]/wsgi.py
Deploying Django makes use of WSGI, the Pythonic way of deploying web applications. See the official settings documentation on WSGI for more details. The default WSGI-application is modified to use our settings-module.

apps/

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── *snap*
├── apps/
│   └── __init__.py
└── *snap*

This directory is used for custom applications. You can safely remove this directory, if you do not plan to develop custom applications. Most of a Django project’s apps will be installed into the Python path and not be kept in your project root.

configs/

This directory contains configuration files for deployment. Now only a configuration file for deployment with Apache2 and mod_wsgi is provided.

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── *snap*
├── configs/
│   ├── apache2_vhost.sample
│   └── README
└── *snap*

Please note: It is strongly advised to keep your actual server configuration private. Therefore a .gitignore-file is provided, which will only include files ending with the suffix .sample into Git.

For a brief overview of the configs/apach2_vhost.sample refer to Apache2 Virtual Host Configuration.

doc/

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── *snap*
├── doc/
│   ├── Makefile
│   └── source/
│       └── *snap*
└── *snap*

This directory contains the source files for this documentation.

You can safely remove this directory, if you just want to use the skeleton for your own project.

run/

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── *snap*
├── run/
│   ├── media/
│   │   └── README
│   ├── README
│   └── static/
│       └── README
└── *snap*

This directory contains necessary files for running Django. All these files may contain sensible or useless information, so you will not want to keep this files in version control. A .gitignore-file is prepared.

This directory will contain the SQLite database file (if you keep the provided dev-settings) and the SECRET_KEY of Django. For a detailled explanation see Settings.

run/media/
Django uses a special folder to store user-provided files (uploads). In the settings-module of this skeleton this directory is set as MEDIA_ROOT.
run/static/
Similar to media files, all static assets (i.e. stylesheets, javascript files, images) are served from a special directory.

static/ and templates/

[projectname]/                  <- project root
├── *snap*
├── static/
│   └── README
└── templates/
    ├── base.html
    ├── core
    │   └── login.html
    └── README

These directories are used for project wide files, meaning project wide static assets and templates.

static/
This directory is used to provide our project wide static assets. Please refer to the Django documentation for more details. Settings documents the STATICFILES_DIRS-setting.
templates/
This directory is used to provide our project wide templates. Settings documents the TEMPLATE_DIRS-setting. Please note, that there are two basic templates are already included. These are used to enable a very basic login functionality for the project.