Tech Blog with Django

Rational

I developed a tech blog in python using the Django framework. Thus, it is Server-Side Rendered.

The blog was deployed on AWS Beanstalk, the static files were served from an AWS S3 bucket, and the production data was stored in an AWS RDS Postgres database.

It used HTMX for the search bar.

After the AWS free tier expired, I moved the tech blog to the ClojureScript SPA.

Features

The different features of the` blog are the following:

• Users can create an account `and login/logout
• Logged-in users can create/edit/delete posts
• The posts are written in markdown with preview of what the post will look like before submission
• There is syntax highlighting for the code blocks
• The UI supports light/dark mode toggle
• Posts can be sorted in different categories (such as clojure, python for instance)
• Users can search a post using the search bar that display the matching posts as they type in the search bar.

CI/CD

Env variable

I used django-environ to handle env variables.

My settings are divided in 3 files settings/common.clj, settings/dev.clj and settings/prod.clj.

Static files

The static files are stored in AWS S3 in production.

I use Django-storages as a storage backend system for my Django app. Django-storages provides various storage backends, including the one designed to work with AWS S3. It abstracts the process of interacting with different storage solutions, making it easier to switch between them if needed.

Then I use boto3 which is the official AWS SDK for Python so I can programmatically interact with AWS S3.

Finally, I can run the collectstatic django command to gather and upload the static files to the S3 bucket

Storage

In production, the data is stored in an AWS RDS PostgreSQL database.

The library psycopg2-binary allows my app to communicate with a PostgreSQL database.

For dev, I used the default SQLite configuration provided by Django.

Run the server

In production, I use an AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

I use gunicorn as HTTP server.

To deploy new app versions, I rely on the AWS CLI EB so I just have to run eb deploy to deploy the new app version on the AWS beanstalk.

Domain

The blog used to be hosted at blog.loicb.dev. I used a CNAME record to map my personal subdomain to the Application Load Balancer's DNS.

However I moved the blog content to my clojure SPA instead because after my AWS free tier expired, the monthly cost for hosting the blog was around $50 which was too much for a simple blog.

Learn more

I wrote an article on how I deployed the Django app in AWS (link at the top of the page).

Have a look at the repo README for more information.