Nick Moreton's Wagtail-Powered Website

Source code for www.nickmoreton.co.uk, a Django and Wagtail site with custom content models, a small frontend build pipeline, and Docker-based local development.

Project Map

• webapp/home/, webapp/pages/, webapp/core/, and webapp/search/ contain the Wagtail apps.
• webapp/settings/ contains shared, development, and production settings.
• webapp/templates/ and app-level templates/ directories contain Django templates.
• webapp/static_src/ contains Sass, JavaScript, and source images.
• webapp/static_compiled/ contains generated frontend assets served by Django.
• docker/, docker-compose.yaml, and Makefile contain local development support.
• docs/ contains deployment, production-mode local checks, data, and media workflows.
• CHANGELOG.md records notable unreleased and released changes.

Requirements

• Docker Compose
• Node.js and npm
• Python tooling is installed inside the app container with uv

Copy the example environment file before running the normal development or Heroku-backed data/media targets:

cp .env.example .env

For basic local development, the placeholder values are enough. Production-mode local checks can run without .env. Heroku and S3 values are only needed for data and media sync; see Data and media.

First Run

Build the frontend, build and start the containers, run migrations, collect static files, and create a superuser:

make quickstart

Start the Django development server:

make run

View the site at http://localhost:8000 and the Wagtail admin at http://localhost:8000/admin.

Daily Development

Start the containers if they are not already running:

make up

Run Django:

make run

In another terminal, watch frontend assets:

npm start

Django Browser Reload is enabled, so browser pages reload when watched frontend files are rebuilt.

Production-Mode Local Check

Use this workflow when you want to exercise the site with DEBUG = False, Gunicorn, Postgres, collected static files, and nginx serving /static/ and /media/:

make prod-run

This can run from source without first starting the normal development stack or pulling production data/media. It creates a blank production-mode database from migrations unless you later mirror local data into it.

For a first production-mode boot that also prompts for a Wagtail admin user, run:

make prod-quickstart

To pull Heroku data directly into production mode without setting up the normal local development database first, run make prod-pull-data. To pull S3 media directly into production mode, run make prod-pull-media.

View the site at https://prod-nginx.nickmoreton-production.orb.local and the Wagtail admin at https://prod-nginx.nickmoreton-production.orb.local/admin. Normal development still uses make up, make run, and npm start.

The stack also exposes a localhost fallback at http://localhost:8001. If port 8001 is already in use, set PROD_PORT, for example PROD_PORT=8002 make prod-run; the OrbStack HTTPS URL remains the same.

For step-by-step commands and troubleshooting, see Production-mode local checks.

Common Commands

Command	Purpose
make quickstart	First local boot: frontend build, Docker build/start, migrations, static files, superuser prompt.
make build	Build Docker images.
make up	Start Postgres and the app container.
make run	Run Django at http://localhost:8000.
make migrate	Run Django migrations inside the app container.
make prod-quickstart	First production-mode boot: build/start, migrations, static files, superuser prompt.
make prod-run	Build and run production mode from source with Gunicorn behind nginx.
make prod-destroy	Stop production-mode containers and remove their Docker volumes.
make test	Run the Django test suite inside the app container.
npm run build	Build Sass, JavaScript, and images once.
npm start	Watch frontend assets during development.

Focused Docs

• Data and media: Heroku/S3 sync, local database dumps, media copy helpers, and cleanup notes.
• Production-mode local checks: run the site locally with DEBUG = False, Gunicorn, Postgres, and nginx.