Does it matter where the Django project exists on the system?

Question

Aside from not deploying a Django project to the web site root directory, is there any specific benefit to running Django projects from one location, e.g. /var/django-projects/*xxxxx-project/ vs. (in a shared hosting environment) running each Django project in a domain folder, e.g. */vhost/mydomain.com/xxxxx-project?

Answer 1

Realistically it shouldn't matter where you put them so long as you're consistent.

I think the biggest argument one way or another would boil down to file system permissions and where related files will be. If you are allowing development from different users on the projects but want to limit their scope, this is where the split will make more sense.

Answer 2

Doesn't matter -- choose an organization that fits your needs.

I roughly followed this guide when creating a server to handle several Django sites, and I like the folder organization it uses. A couple of benefits:

• All Django sites are in a special django user's home directory
• There is a domains folder, then a folder for every site that contains the django projects, logs, wsgi files, and other files
• VirtualHost containers are each in the own file, keeing httpd.conf manageable.

Answer 3

No except to extent that you mention, ie., that it shouldn't be under DocumentRoot for any site.

You should also ensure that the WSGI script file is not in the same directory as the Django settings file as doing so would generally see you saying to Apache that that directory can be served up by Apache. This may not happen as there will be no Alias directive mapping a URL to that directory, but you have still removed one layer of protection from Apache security.

So, follow the guidelines in:

http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/IntegrationWithDjango

and have the WSGI script file in a directory of its own which has no source code at all under it, or have the WSGI script file in a completely different directory outside of Django project, which again contains only script files of other files that Apache would technically be allowed to serve up.

Basic rule is don't stick source code (except for WSGI script file) in any directory for which:

Allow from all

has been defined by way of Apache configuration.

Of course, above partly assumes you are using mod_wsgi. :-)