How to deploy your Django app in a PythonAnywhere free tier account.

After creating a PythonAnywhere free account, head over to the Web tab, then:
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<ol>
<li>Select Add a new web app</li>
<li>Click Next</li>
<li>Click Manual Configuration</li>
<li>Select the Python version (3.10)</li>
<li>Click Next</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;

Create a Site

Go to Consoles (or Dashboard), then create a new bash console:
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Once you're in, pull your code from <a href="https://github.com/simofirdoussi/django-demo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GitHub</a>:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>git clone &lt;link&gt;</code></pre>
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/00167bf4-a2bc-425d-bfbe-6546851a0f6f_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.gif" alt="" width="800" height="439">
Change your directory to the project's directory:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>cd django-demo/</code></pre>

Pull Your Code

Go to the Console you created earlier, then:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>mkvirtualenv env --python=/usr/bin/python3.10</code></pre>
This command will create a virtual environment and it will activate it.
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<h4>Add your virtual environment to the web app config:</h4>
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Virtual Environment - 1

<h4>Head over to the console, then;</h4>
<pre class="language-markup"><code>cd django-demo/</code></pre>
Move to your django project's(in this case django-demo/) directory (AKA where manage.py exists).
<h4>Install the requirements:</h4>
<pre class="language-markup"><code>pip install -r requirements.txt</code></pre>
Note:&nbsp;You should generate a requirements file from your local virtual environment.
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/5aa82610-9e83-4ee6-aa14-f103dce298f1_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.webp" alt="" width="1728" height="647">

Virtual Environment - 2

In production, static files are served differently from development. In our case, our Django Project is going to serve its own static files from the STATIC_ROOT.
<pre class="language-python"><code>STATIC_URL = 'static/'
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'static/'</code></pre>
Head over to the console one more time, and run:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py collectstatic</code></pre>
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/ebd70615-847d-42ef-b135-00f90b5a5dcc_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.webp" alt="" width="1470" height="674">
This command will copy all of the static files to the&nbsp;STATIC_ROOT. In production, they're going to be served from there.
<h4>Configure static files in your web app:</h4>
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Note: The directory will contain the directory of our static files (the one we got as a result of running collectstatic)

Static Files

When not using any third party to handle our media files, all we need to do is this:
<pre class="language-python"><code>MEDIA_URL = 'media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'media/'</code></pre>
<h4>Configure media files in your web app:</h4>
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/73ba8d3e-7f99-41bb-bcfb-fed21259c1c9_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.gif" alt="" width="800" height="490">
Note: Be careful if your media files are stored in a file called media/ vs medias/, you don't wanna misspell it.

Media Files

Open your WSGI file:
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/fc6bfb8e-6488-4f8d-8425-ec1f46584849_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.webp" alt="" width="1728" height="1034">
Replace everything with this:
<pre class="language-python"><code># +++++++++++ DJANGO +++++++++++
# To use your own django app use code like this:
import os
import sys
#
## assuming your django settings file is at '/home/username/mysite/mysite/settings.py'
## and your manage.py is is at '/home/username/mysite/manage.py'
path = '/home/username/mysite/'

if path not in sys.path:
 sys.path.append(path)

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'mysite.settings'
from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
application = get_wsgi_application()</code></pre>
Replace the path variable with the path to your Django project:
You can know the path to your Django project by moving to the directory where&nbsp;manage.py exists, then typing pwd (in your terminal).
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/77e06415-6a77-42b3-b2fb-64141428cdf6_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.webp" alt="" width="964" height="522">
Replace&nbsp;mysite with the name of your django project, in our case: project.

Configure the WSGI file

<h4>Enable HTTPS:</h4>
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To apply the changes to a web app hosted in PythonAnywhere, we should reload the web app:
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HTTPs & Reload App

Having the development database and the production database separated is what is recommended.
If using any other database rather than an SQLite3&nbsp;database, you might wanna host your database somewhere(PythonAnywhere included) and establish your connection by modifying the django settings.py file.
In this case, we're using an SQLite3 database, and we didn't push it with the code. This means that we'll have to run the migrations so that everything comes in order:
<h4>Activate the virtual environment:</h4>
<pre class="language-markup"><code>workon env</code></pre>
<h4>Run the migrations:</h4>
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py migrate</code></pre>
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&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Run the migrations

<h4>Create a superuser:</h4>
<img src="https://kowe.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploads/content/897faeb4-aec3-438a-88d6-acc99f0c26e9_e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e.webp" alt="" width="1212" height="418">
I always create short passwords 😂, don't do it, absolutely not recommended 🙄.
You will be able to access the admin panel normally from username.pythonanywhere.com/admin/
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Superuser & Admin Panel

You should keep in mind that there is a checklist to follow before deploying your Django app. One of those checklist items are setting Debug to False, and adding your PythonAnywhere domain to the ALLOWED_HOSTS.&nbsp;
If you followed this tutorial using the django-demo project, you'll notice I made those changes before for the sake of simplicity, and made the <code>ALLOWED_HOSTS=['*']</code>, this means that any host is allowed. My point is that doing this for your web app is not recommended.
<h4>Deploy code updates:</h4>
To publish changes you made to your Django project:
<ol>
<li>Push the code to GitHub</li>
<li>Pull the code from the PythonAnywhere bash console(make sure you're inside of the Django project)</li>
<li>If there are any migrations to do, run them, but make sure your virtual environment is active.</li>
<li>Finally, reload your web app.</li>
</ol>

Deploy Django to PythonAnywhere - SQLite

Create a Site

30%

30%

Create a Site

Pull Your Code

Virtual Environment - 1

Virtual Environment - 2

Static Files

Media Files

Configure the WSGI file

HTTPs & Reload App

Run the migrations

Superuser & Admin Panel

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