Reckless Ham (formerly Lazy Baker)

recklessham.com

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Stack

• Python 3.12, Django 5.2, Wagtail 7
• PostgreSQL 17 (via Docker)
• AWS S3 for static and media files in production
• Gunicorn as the application server
• uv for dependency management

Local Development

Setup

1. Copy the example env and fill in values:

cp .env.example .env

Required variables:

DEBUG=True
PRODUCTION=False
SECRET_KEY=<a-long-random-string>
ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost,127.0.0.1
DB_NAME=lazy_baker
DB_HOST=db

AWS credentials are only needed when PRODUCTION=True. Leave them out for local development.

2. Start the containers:

docker compose up

3. On first run (or after restoring a database dump), run migrations and populate the search index:

docker compose exec web python manage.py migrate
docker compose exec web python manage.py update_index

4. Create a superuser to access the Wagtail admin:

docker compose exec web python manage.py createsuperuser

Useful commands

# Run tests
docker compose exec web python manage.py test

# Open a Django shell
docker compose exec web python manage.py shell

# Rebuild containers after dependency changes
docker compose build

Admin URLs

• Wagtail admin: http://localhost:8000/admin/
• Django admin: http://localhost:8000/django-admin/

Production

Set PRODUCTION=True in the environment. This enables:

• Static and media files served from AWS S3
• Database authentication via DB_USER / DB_PASSWORD
• SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER for HTTPS behind a proxy

Additional env variables required in production:

PRODUCTION=True
DEBUG=False
DB_USER=...
DB_PASSWORD=...
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=...
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

After deploying, run:

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py update_index
python manage.py collectstatic --noinput