// the find
nickjj/docker-django-example
A production ready example Django app that's using Docker and Docker Compose.
A production-ready Django starter that wires up the full stack: Postgres, Redis, Celery, esbuild, Tailwind, gunicorn, whitenoise — all in Docker Compose. It's a template you clone and rename, not a framework or generator. Aimed at developers who want the boring infrastructure decisions already made.
The `run` shell script as a Makefile replacement is genuinely well thought out — it passes arbitrary arguments through to Docker commands, which a real Makefile can't do cleanly. Switching to `uv` for package management is the right call in 2025; builds are noticeably faster. The rename script (`bin/rename-project`) handles the tedious find-replace-and-restart dance so you don't start from a repo named 'hello'. Signed cookies as the session backend is a sensible default that avoids session storage complexity until you actually need it.
No authentication scaffolding at all — you get a home page and a health check, then you're on your own for login/signup, which is where most projects immediately diverge anyway. Celery is wired up but there are no example tasks, so you're left guessing at the intended patterns for retries, queues, and beat schedules. The JS story is punted entirely with a list of six options and 'pick one yourself', which is fine philosophically but means the esbuild config is essentially untested beyond a stub `app.js`. If you're deploying somewhere other than a single VPS running Docker Compose, the production story in the docs amounts to 'I'm making a course about this someday'.