Configuring Django for Wagtail

To install Wagtail completely from scratch, create a new Django project and an app within that project. For instructions on these tasks, see Writing your first Django app. Your project directory will look like the following:

myproject/
    myproject/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        wsgi.py
    myapp/
        __init__.py
        models.py
        tests.py
        admin.py
        views.py
    manage.py

From your app directory, you can safely remove admin.py and views.py, since Wagtail will provide this functionality for your models. Configuring Django to load Wagtail involves adding modules and variables to settings.py and URL configuration to urls.py. For a more complete view of what’s defined in these files, see Django Settings and Django URL Dispatcher.

What follows is a settings reference which skips many boilerplate Django settings. If you just want to get your Wagtail install up quickly without fussing with settings at the moment, see Ready to Use Example Configuration Files.

Middleware (settings.py)

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = [
  'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
  'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
  'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
  'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
  'django.contrib.auth.middleware.SessionAuthenticationMiddleware',
  'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
  'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
  'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',

  'wagtail.wagtailcore.middleware.SiteMiddleware',

  'wagtail.wagtailredirects.middleware.RedirectMiddleware',
]

Wagtail requires several common Django middleware modules to work and cover basic security. Wagtail provides its own middleware to cover these tasks:

SiteMiddleware
Wagtail routes pre-defined hosts to pages within the Wagtail tree using this middleware.
RedirectMiddleware
Wagtail provides a simple interface for adding arbitrary redirects to your site and this module makes it happen.

Apps (settings.py)

INSTALLED_APPS = [

  'myapp',  # your own app

  'wagtail.wagtailforms',
  'wagtail.wagtailredirects',
  'wagtail.wagtailembeds',
  'wagtail.wagtailsites',
  'wagtail.wagtailusers',
  'wagtail.wagtailsnippets',
  'wagtail.wagtaildocs',
  'wagtail.wagtailimages',
  'wagtail.wagtailsearch',
  'wagtail.wagtailadmin',
  'wagtail.wagtailcore',

  'taggit',
  'modelcluster',

  'django.contrib.auth',
  'django.contrib.contenttypes',
  'django.contrib.sessions',
  'django.contrib.messages',
  'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

Wagtail requires several Django app modules, third-party apps, and defines several apps of its own. Wagtail was built to be modular, so many Wagtail apps can be omitted to suit your needs. Your own app (here myapp) is where you define your models, templates, static assets, template tags, and other custom functionality for your site.

Wagtail Apps

wagtailcore
The core functionality of Wagtail, such as the Page class, the Wagtail tree, and model fields.
wagtailadmin
The administration interface for Wagtail, including page edit handlers.
wagtaildocs
The Wagtail document content type.
wagtailsnippets
Editing interface for non-Page models and objects. See Snippets.
wagtailusers
User editing interface.
wagtailimages
The Wagtail image content type.
wagtailembeds
Module governing oEmbed and Embedly content in Wagtail rich text fields. See Inserting videos into body content.
wagtailsearch
Search framework for Page content. See Search Page.
wagtailredirects
Admin interface for creating arbitrary redirects on your site.
wagtailforms
Models for creating forms on your pages and viewing submissions. See Form builder.

Third-Party Apps

taggit
Tagging framework for Django. This is used internally within Wagtail for image and document tagging and is available for your own models as well. See Tagging for a Wagtail model recipe or the Taggit Documentation.
modelcluster
Extension of Django ForeignKey relation functionality, which is used in Wagtail pages for on-the-fly related object creation. For more information, see Inline Panels and Model Clusters or the django-modelcluster github project page.

Settings Variables (settings.py)

Wagtail makes use of the following settings, in addition to Django’s core settings:

Site Name

WAGTAIL_SITE_NAME = 'Stark Industries Skunkworks'

This is the human-readable name of your Wagtail install which welcomes users upon login to the Wagtail admin.

Append Slash

# Don't add a trailing slash to Wagtail-served URLs
WAGTAIL_APPEND_SLASH = False

Similar to Django’s APPEND_SLASH, this setting controls how Wagtail will handle requests that don’t end in a trailing slash.

When WAGTAIL_APPEND_SLASH is True (default), requests to Wagtail pages which omit a trailing slash will be redirected by Django’s CommonMiddleware to a URL with a trailing slash.

When WAGTAIL_APPEND_SLASH is False, requests to Wagtail pages will be served both with and without trailing slashes. Page links generated by Wagtail, however, will not include trailing slashes.

Note

If you use the False setting, keep in mind that serving your pages both with and without slashes may affect search engines’ ability to index your site. See this Google Webmaster Blog post for more details.

Embeds

Wagtail supports generating embed code from URLs to content on an external providers such as Youtube or Twitter. By default, Wagtail will fetch the embed code directly from the relevant provider’s site using the oEmbed protocol. Wagtail has a builtin list of the most common providers.

The embeds fetching can be fully configured using the WAGTAILEMBEDS_FINDERS setting. This is fully documented in Configuring embed “finders”.

Dashboard

New in version 1.10.

WAGTAILADMIN_RECENT_EDITS_LIMIT = 5

This setting lets you change the number of items shown at ‘Your most recent edits’ on the dashboard.

Images

WAGTAILIMAGES_IMAGE_MODEL = 'myapp.MyImage'

This setting lets you provide your own image model for use in Wagtail, which might extend the built-in AbstractImage class or replace it entirely.

Maximum Upload size for Images

WAGTAILIMAGES_MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE = 20 * 1024 * 1024  # i.e. 20MB

This setting lets you override the maximum upload size for images (in bytes). If omitted, Wagtail will fall back to using its 10MB default value.

Password Management

WAGTAIL_PASSWORD_MANAGEMENT_ENABLED = True

This specifies whether users are allowed to change their passwords (enabled by default).

WAGTAIL_PASSWORD_RESET_ENABLED = True

This specifies whether users are allowed to reset their passwords. Defaults to the same as WAGTAIL_PASSWORD_MANAGEMENT_ENABLED.

WAGTAILUSERS_PASSWORD_ENABLED = True

This specifies whether password fields are shown when creating or editing users through Settings -> Users (enabled by default). Set this to False (along with WAGTAIL_PASSWORD_MANAGEMENT_ENABLED and WAGTAIL_PASSWORD_RESET_ENABLED) if your users are authenticated through an external system such as LDAP.

WAGTAILUSERS_PASSWORD_REQUIRED = True

This specifies whether password is a required field when creating a new user. True by default; ignored if WAGTAILUSERS_PASSWORD_ENABLED is false. If this is set to False, and the password field is left blank when creating a user, then that user will have no usable password, and will not be able to log in unless an alternative authentication system such as LDAP is set up.

Email Notifications

WAGTAILADMIN_NOTIFICATION_FROM_EMAIL = 'wagtail@myhost.io'

Wagtail sends email notifications when content is submitted for moderation, and when the content is accepted or rejected. This setting lets you pick which email address these automatic notifications will come from. If omitted, Django will fall back to using the DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL variable if set, and webmaster@localhost if not.

Email Notifications format

WAGTAILADMIN_NOTIFICATION_USE_HTML = True

Notification emails are sent in text/plain by default, change this to use HTML formatting.

Wagtail update notifications

WAGTAIL_ENABLE_UPDATE_CHECK = True

For admins only, Wagtail performs a check on the dashboard to see if newer releases are available. This also provides the Wagtail team with the hostname of your Wagtail site. If you’d rather not receive update notifications, or if you’d like your site to remain unknown, you can disable it with this setting.

Private pages / documents

PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE = 'myapp/password_required.html'

This is the path to the Django template which will be used to display the “password required” form when a user accesses a private page. For more details, see the Private pages documentation.

DOCUMENT_PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE = 'myapp/document_password_required.html'

New in version 1.11.

As above, but for password restrictions on documents. For more details, see the Private pages documentation.

Case-Insensitive Tags

TAGGIT_CASE_INSENSITIVE = True

Tags are case-sensitive by default (‘music’ and ‘Music’ are treated as distinct tags). In many cases the reverse behaviour is preferable.

Multi-word tags

New in version 1.10.

TAG_SPACES_ALLOWED = False

Tags can only consist of a single word, no spaces allowed. The default setting is True (spaces in tags are allowed).

Unicode Page Slugs

WAGTAIL_ALLOW_UNICODE_SLUGS = True

By default, page slugs can contain any alphanumeric characters, including non-Latin alphabets (except on Django 1.8, where only ASCII characters are supported). Set this to False to limit slugs to ASCII characters.

Auto update preview

New in version 1.10.

WAGTAIL_AUTO_UPDATE_PREVIEW = False

When enabled, data from an edited page is automatically sent to the server on each change, even without saving. That way, users don’t have to click on “Preview” to update the content of the preview page. However, the preview page tab is not refreshed automatically, users have to do it manually. This behaviour is disabled by default.

Custom User Edit Forms

See Custom user models.

WAGTAIL_USER_EDIT_FORM = 'users.forms.CustomUserEditForm'

Allows the default UserEditForm class to be overridden with a custom form when a custom user model is being used and extra fields are required in the user edit form.

WAGTAIL_USER_CREATION_FORM = 'users.forms.CustomUserCreationForm'

Allows the default UserCreationForm class to be overridden with a custom form when a custom user model is being used and extra fields are required in the user creation form.

WAGTAIL_USER_CUSTOM_FIELDS = ['country']

A list of the extra custom fields to be appended to the default list.

Usage for images, documents and snippets

WAGTAIL_USAGE_COUNT_ENABLED = True

When enabled Wagtail shows where a particular image, document or snippet is being used on your site (disabled by default). A link will appear on the edit page showing you which pages they have been used on.

Note

The usage count only applies to direct (database) references. Using documents, images and snippets within StreamFields or rich text fields will not be taken into account.

Date and DateTime inputs

WAGTAIL_DATE_FORMAT = '%d.%m.%Y.'
WAGTAIL_DATETIME_FORMAT = '%d.%m.%Y. %H:%M'

Specifies the date and datetime format to be used in input fields in the Wagtail admin. The format is specified in Python datetime module syntax, and must be one of the recognised formats listed in the DATE_INPUT_FORMATS or DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS setting respectively (see DATE_INPUT_FORMATS).

Admin languages

New in version 1.10.

Users can choose between several languages for the admin interface in the account settings. The list of languages is by default all the available languages in Wagtail. To change it, set WAGTAILADMIN_PERMITTED_LANGUAGES:

WAGTAILADMIN_PERMITTED_LANGUAGES = [('en', 'English'),
                                    ('pt', 'Portuguese')]

Since the syntax is the same as Django LANGUAGES, you can do this so users can only choose between front office languages:

LANGUAGES = WAGTAILADMIN_PERMITTED_LANGUAGES = [('en', 'English'),
                                                ('pt', 'Portuguese')]

URL Patterns

from django.contrib import admin

from wagtail.wagtailcore import urls as wagtail_urls
from wagtail.wagtailadmin import urls as wagtailadmin_urls
from wagtail.wagtaildocs import urls as wagtaildocs_urls
from wagtail.wagtailsearch import urls as wagtailsearch_urls

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^django-admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),

    url(r'^admin/', include(wagtailadmin_urls)),
    url(r'^search/', include(wagtailsearch_urls)),
    url(r'^documents/', include(wagtaildocs_urls)),

    # Optional URL for including your own vanilla Django urls/views
    url(r'', include('myapp.urls')),

    # For anything not caught by a more specific rule above, hand over to
    # Wagtail's serving mechanism
    url(r'', include(wagtail_urls)),
]

This block of code for your project’s urls.py does a few things:

  • Load the vanilla Django admin interface to /django-admin/
  • Load the Wagtail admin and its various apps
  • Dispatch any vanilla Django apps you’re using other than Wagtail which require their own URL configuration (this is optional, since Wagtail might be all you need)
  • Lets Wagtail handle any further URL dispatching.

That’s not everything you might want to include in your project’s URL configuration, but it’s what’s necessary for Wagtail to flourish.

Ready to Use Example Configuration Files

These two files should reside in your project directory (myproject/myproject/).

settings.py

import os

PROJECT_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(PROJECT_DIR)

DEBUG = True

# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'myapp',

    'wagtail.wagtailforms',
    'wagtail.wagtailredirects',
    'wagtail.wagtailembeds',
    'wagtail.wagtailsites',
    'wagtail.wagtailusers',
    'wagtail.wagtailsnippets',
    'wagtail.wagtaildocs',
    'wagtail.wagtailimages',
    'wagtail.wagtailsearch',
    'wagtail.wagtailadmin',
    'wagtail.wagtailcore',

    'taggit',
    'modelcluster',

    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]


MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = [
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.SessionAuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',

    'wagtail.wagtailcore.middleware.SiteMiddleware',
    'wagtail.wagtailredirects.middleware.RedirectMiddleware',
]

ROOT_URLCONF = 'myproject.urls'

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [
            os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'templates'),
        ],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'wagtaildemo.wsgi.application'

# Database

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'myprojectdb',
        'USER': 'postgres',
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST': '',  # Set to empty string for localhost.
        'PORT': '',  # Set to empty string for default.
        'CONN_MAX_AGE': 600,  # number of seconds database connections should persist for
    }
}

# Internationalization

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'
TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'
USE_I18N = True
USE_L10N = True
USE_TZ = True


# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)

STATICFILES_FINDERS = [
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
]

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'static'),
]

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'


ADMINS = [
    # ('Your Name', 'your_email@example.com'),
]
MANAGERS = ADMINS

# Default to dummy email backend. Configure dev/production/local backend
# as per https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/email/#email-backends
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.dummy.EmailBackend'

# Hosts/domain names that are valid for this site; required if DEBUG is False
ALLOWED_HOSTS = []

# Make this unique, and don't share it with anybody.
SECRET_KEY = 'change-me'

EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = '[Wagtail] '

INTERNAL_IPS = ('127.0.0.1', '10.0.2.2')

# A sample logging configuration. The only tangible logging
# performed by this configuration is to send an email to
# the site admins on every HTTP 500 error when DEBUG=False.
# See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/logging for
# more details on how to customize your logging configuration.
LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'filters': {
        'require_debug_false': {
            '()': 'django.utils.log.RequireDebugFalse'
        }
    },
    'handlers': {
        'mail_admins': {
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'filters': ['require_debug_false'],
            'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler'
        }
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django.request': {
            'handlers': ['mail_admins'],
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'propagate': True,
        },
    }
}


# WAGTAIL SETTINGS

# This is the human-readable name of your Wagtail install
# which welcomes users upon login to the Wagtail admin.
WAGTAIL_SITE_NAME = 'My Project'

# Override the search results template for wagtailsearch
# WAGTAILSEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE = 'myapp/search_results.html'
# WAGTAILSEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE_AJAX = 'myapp/includes/search_listing.html'

# Replace the search backend
#WAGTAILSEARCH_BACKENDS = {
#  'default': {
#    'BACKEND': 'wagtail.wagtailsearch.backends.elasticsearch2',
#    'INDEX': 'myapp'
#  }
#}

# Wagtail email notifications from address
# WAGTAILADMIN_NOTIFICATION_FROM_EMAIL = 'wagtail@myhost.io'

# Wagtail email notification format
# WAGTAILADMIN_NOTIFICATION_USE_HTML = True

# If you want to use Embedly for embeds, supply a key
# (this key doesn't work, get your own!)
# WAGTAILEMBEDS_EMBEDLY_KEY = '253e433d59dc4d2xa266e9e0de0cb830'

# Reverse the default case-sensitive handling of tags
TAGGIT_CASE_INSENSITIVE = True

urls.py

from django.conf.urls import include, url
from django.conf.urls.static import static
from django.views.generic.base import RedirectView
from django.contrib import admin
from django.conf import settings
import os.path

from wagtail.wagtailcore import urls as wagtail_urls
from wagtail.wagtailadmin import urls as wagtailadmin_urls
from wagtail.wagtaildocs import urls as wagtaildocs_urls
from wagtail.wagtailsearch import urls as wagtailsearch_urls


urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^django-admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),

    url(r'^admin/', include(wagtailadmin_urls)),
    url(r'^search/', include(wagtailsearch_urls)),
    url(r'^documents/', include(wagtaildocs_urls)),

    # For anything not caught by a more specific rule above, hand over to
    # Wagtail's serving mechanism
    url(r'', include(wagtail_urls)),
]


if settings.DEBUG:
    from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns

    urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns() # tell gunicorn where static files are in dev mode
    urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL + 'images/', document_root=os.path.join(settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'images'))
    urlpatterns += [
        url(r'^favicon\.ico$', RedirectView.as_view(url=settings.STATIC_URL + 'myapp/images/favicon.ico'))
    ]