cherrypy vs django, which would you use and why
Django, because the community is so much larger. You'll find more 3rd-party modules you can use and you'll find much more support.
Agree, with Fragsworth, django has great docs, community and imho couldn't be simpler. Moreover, if not SO i didn't hear about it, so django must beat full cherrypy. (but i am curios, will find here anyone who has experience with both)
I would use Django because of it's large user base and existing modules (including the built-in admin interface) but I would imaging that CherryPy is more flexible than Django. You just have to look at the available options, figure out what you want to do and choose the platform that supports that the best.
They're not exactly comparable. CherryPy provides url routing and a request/response abstraction, which makes prototyping very easy (although I find vanilla mod_python just as convenient). Django is a complete web application "stack", including a templating system and an object-relational mapper.
CherryPy is web server "http framework", while Django supports web application front-to-end: it provides object-relational mapper, template, session management, automagically generates DB schema and all CRUD screens, and more.
Though e.e. coli has already provided the accepted answer (and a good one at that), one thing I'll say in favor of CherryPy is that it is also implements WSGI out of the box. What this means is that, unlike the mod_python approach mentioned (which I believe is still an Apache-only solution)*, it provides abstraction from your web server. If you are all Apache all the time, this isn't so much a win, but if you ever think you may want to try alternate web servers, such as Lighttpd, then you can swap your web server w/o also having to make adjustments in your Python app. This was a big win for me personally.
*I don't mention Django here because I'm not a Django user (I don't like "full stack" frameworks) and so will leave any comments regarding it to it's many fans - all of whom are more qualified than I to answer questions about it.