Question

I struggled with this for quite a while so I figured I’d Q&A it to save someone the headache over a relativity simple solution.

Heilohost comes with Django 1.3, Can I install my own version (Django 1.4)?

Answer 1

Edit:
Extended walk-through

Uploading your site

Create a new subdirectory in the public_html directory under your account root. Name this subdirectory the same name as your Django project. Now, upload your Django project to the specified subdirectory through either FTP or the cPanel File Manager. Do the same thing for your apps

It should look like this:

home/  
+ <user_name>  
    + public_html  
        - <project_name>  
            * __init__.py  
            * settings.py  
            * urls.py  
            * ...  
        - <app_name>  
            * __init__.py  
            * views.py  
            * models.py  
            * ...  
        - media
        - templates
        - static

Running Django 1.4

HelioHost comes installed with Django 1.3, which can be kind of obnoxious if you’ve developed everything in 1.4. Luckily, it’s a pretty easy problem to solve. You’ll need to use Filezilla or something to do this.

Go download the Django source files from https://www.djangoproject.com/download/1.4/tarball and unzip it. Then using filezilla transfer the directory Django-1.4/django into your public_html folder

Next, create a dispatch file (dispatch.wsgi) to handle your project, and put it in /home/<user_name>/public_html/<project_name> In order to run 1.4 you’ll have to set it up like this:

import os, sys

sys.path.insert(0,"/home/<user_name>/public_html")

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = '<project_name>.settings'
os.environ['PYTHON_EGG_CACHE'] = '/home/<user_name>/.python_egg_cache'


from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
application = get_wsgi_application()

“/home/<user_name>/public_html” has to be inserted into the front of your sys path so that your uploaded copy of django is the one that’s used.

Make its CHMOD permissions 755

Follow the rest of the steps heilohost outlines and you’re good to go