Question

I’m following through the Django Tutorials by HackedExistence on youtube.
Since the video is about a year old, I assume that the version differences may contribute to this problem. I’m currently on the 2nd video but this issue arose since the first.

On my browser,

http://video1.hackedexistence.com/

This link opens up the Apache 2 Test Page, and the localhost link opens up the Django Administrator page nicely.

But he sets it up so that the hacked existence link loads up the Django Admin page.

How is he able to achieve this? and what steps are needed for setting it up that way with the versions that I’m working with.

Python 2.7.3, Django 1.4.1, Apache 2.2.22 (Unix)

Running on OS X 10.6.8.

Answer 1

video1.hackedexistence.com is (presumably) a domain under the control of HackedExistence, and it’s showing an Apache 2 test page because the server it’s pointing to is not configured to show anything else. You have no control over this domain or the server it is pointing to, so you can’t affect it directly.

It doesn’t have anything to do with different versions of python, django, apache, or anything else; it’s likely that HackedExistence chose to move on to something else, is no longer maintaining his site (or at least the content on that subdomain of it) and his tutorial now no longer works as a result.

The closest you can come is add an entry to your /private/etc/hosts file (on OSX) so that video1.hackedexistence.com resolves to 127.0.0.1 (i.e. localhost, your own computer), but this is almost certainly not what you’re after. For example, if you do this, everybody else will still see the test page you’re seeing now, because the /etc/hosts file is just telling your computer to treat the video1.hackedexistence.com domain as if it’s pointing to your computer.

For learning web development, you can safely completely disregard this and can continue to test on your local computer.

When it comes to deploying the website for other people to view and use, you will need to buy a domain (e.g. at http://namecheap.com/), get some hosting (for python/django hosting I can recommend WebFaction , or you can use Heroku‘s free plan), and follow the Django deployment instructions in the official documentation (or the documentation provided by the hosting provider you choose). My advice is to focus on learning web development and get something working before you spend money on any hosting.