How to Install and Deploy Django for a Production Environment

This article will provide thorough explanations, descriptions and a walk-through of the installation of Django, Celery, Redis, Nginx with an SSL Certificate for a web app.  Sign up and receive the Django on Ubuntu for Production on Linux script. Stability is one of the primary reasons for deploying a production Django. Linux is also an ideal environment for running Celery for asynchronous task execution, Redis as a broker and backend for Celery and Nginx as your web server.

 

Complications can arise with the installation of even just a few of the necessary application components.   Components such as the asynchronous task-master, Celery, Redis as the Celery messages broker and back end, along with NGINX to serve up the web pages.  These complications are greatly minimized when going with a Linux system versus Windows.  In fact, the general convention and wisdom is that you don't deploy Django on Windows to use for production. Only Linux for Django and celery and all the rest of the components to work in harmony together.

Installation Prerequisites - Python 3.10+

You will need an Ubuntu 22.04+ box with Python 3.10+ installed. Our script is based on the installation Ubuntu 24.04 and Python 3.12.

Install PIP

Check your Python version and install PIP with the particular version you have installed:
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo -H python3.12

Install Gunicorn

pip3 install gunicorn

Configure Gunicorn

Create the socket file for Gunicorn...
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.socket and copy and paste this code.
[Unit] Description=gunicorn socket [Socket] ListenStream=/run/gunicorn.sock [Install] WantedBy=sockets.target Create the service file...
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service and copy and paste this code.
[Unit] Description=gunicorn daemon Requires=gunicorn.socket After=network.target [Service] User=ubuntu Group=www-data WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/my_project ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/my_venv/bin/gunicorn \ --access-logfile - \ --workers 3 \ --timeout 600 \ --bind unix:/run/gunicorn.sock \ my_project.wsgi:application [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

Install & Activate Virtual Environment

sudo pip3 install virtualenv virtualenv -p python3.12 mrolive source /home/ubuntu/mrolive/bin/activate

Install Django, Celery, Redis and Helpers

pip3 install django==4.2.4 pip3 install django-redis==5.2.0 pip3 install redis==4.5.5 pip3 install celery==5.2.7 pip3 install kombu==5.2.4

Set up Logging for Celery

sudo mkdir /var/log/celery sudo chown -R ubuntu: /var/log/celery/ sudo chmod -R 775 /var/log/celery/

Install Redis

sudo apt-get install redis-server redis-cli ping
You should get back: Pong Now set up auto-restart upon system reboot for Redis service." sudo systemctl enable redis-server.service

Install Nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx

Configure Nginx

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/my_project server { listen 80; server_name ; location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; } location /static { autoindex on; alias /var/www/my_project/static/; } location / { include proxy_params; proxy_pass http://unix:/run/gunicorn.sock; } }

Start Gunicorn

Start the Gunicorn socket.
sudo systemctl start gunicorn.socket Enable the Gunicorn socket.
sudo systemctl enable gunicorn.socket Check the Gunicorn socket status.
sudo systemctl status gunicorn.socket Check the Journal to Troubleshoot Problems
sudo journalctl -u gunicorn.socket Start the Gunicorn service.
sudo systemctl start gunicorn Confirm it started and if not check for issues in the status.
sudo systemctl status gunicorn The most common reason I have found for issues with Gunicorn starting or running continuously is that the IP address is not in the settings.py file found in the Django project directory. It should be listed in the "Allowed Hosts" section in settings.py. Configuration files for Nginx and Gunicorn are necessary for Django's WSGI server to talk to Gunicorn and serve HTML templates, CSS, images and other static files. file.

Collect & Copy Static Files to Static Directory

python manage.py collectstatic