Manually install your django CMS project in 5 simple steps

Nov. 21, 2023

If you want to get to know django CMS, go ahead and install your own test project locally with 5 simple steps.

Welcome page after successful installation

Django CMS comes with a simple djangocms management command to start a new project, just like Django's `startproject` command. Let's use it to start a django CMS project! This works for the upcoming django CMS 4.1 version. Find a similar approach in the summary below for django CMS 3.11.

This post is meant to show how to get django CMS running locally quickly.

If you want to start your production-ready dockerized django CMS project, please use django CMS Quickstart!

Five shell commands to get started in 5 minutes

OK, start by opening a terminal window or shell and navigate to, or create, a directory where you would like to work. Here is a set of commands that will prepare the environment, install django CMS, create a database with a user and to start the server.

Set up a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate

Install django CMS using pip (and its dependecy resolver):
```
python -m pip install django-cms
```
Create a new project, the database and a superuser:
```
djangocms cmsproject
```
Visit the project:
```
cd cmsproject
```
Have fun:
```
python -m manage runserver
```

Now point your browser at the local address which the runserver command shows (typically http://127.0.0.1:8000) and log in with the newly created superuser's name and password. After login, use the wizard which opens automatically to create your first page!

Take off from here

These commands are supposed to get you going quickly. For example, just as creating a new Django project using django-admin startproject this set of commands does not create a database server (it just uses sqlite). But you can go ahead and extend your newly setup project by working on the cmsproject/cmsproject/settings.py file.

Here are some ideas:

Create your project HTML templates in the templates/ folder
Add (or remove) django CMS plugins from INSTALLED_APPS
Configure the DATABASES setting (default uses sqlite)
Configure languages in LANGUAGES

Do you like the approach? You can easily customize your templates by forking our cms-template repository.

Summary

Below are the commands you need to start your own django CMS project locally using django CMS' djangocms shortcut or Django's django-admin startproject management command.

How did they work for you? Let me know in the comments!

django CMS 4.1

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install django-cms
djangocms cmsproject
cd cmsproject
python -m manage runserver

django CMS 3.11

The same procedure works for django CMS 3.11, too. These are the commands:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install "djangocms-frontend[cms-3]"
django-admin startproject --template https://github.com/django-cms/cms-template/archive/3.11.zip cmsproject
cd cmsproject
python -m manage migrate
python -m manage createsuperuser
python -m manage cms test
python -m manage runserver