Wagtail Starter Kit (base)

This is a starter kit for a Wagtail project. It includes a Docker setup for local development, a basic project structure, and some useful tools and libraries.

Features

• Docker Development Environment
• Postgresql, Mysql or Sqlite3 Database
• Frontend Node SASS and Javascript compilation
• Pico CSS for almost classless styling
• esbuild javascript bundler
• Wagtail CMS v6.3

Requirements

Required:

• Python >= 3.10
• Docker
• Docker Compose
• Node.js (for frontend build tools)

Optional:

• Git (optional, for version control)
• Make (optional, for running commands)
• NVM (optional, for managing Node versions)
• pre-commit (optional, for running code checks)
• poetry (optional, for managing Python dependencies)

Getting started

1. Clone this repository https://github.com/wagtail-examples/wagtail-starter-kit.git to a location on your computer
2. Change into the project directory
3. Run make build to build the Docker containers
4. Run make up to start the Docker containers
5. Run make migrate to apply database migrations
6. Run make createsuperuser to create a superuser
7. Run make run to start the Django development server

Quick start

There is a make command to run most of the steps above in one go:

make quickstart

You'll need to run make superuser separately.

View the site

The site will be available at http://localhost:8000.

The Wagtail admin interface will be available at http://localhost:8000/admin.

Choose a databse (optional)

By default, the project uses PostgreSQL. If you'd like to use MySQL or Sqlite3 instead uncomment the required DC variable in the Makefile and comment out the others.

Frontend

CSS Styling

The project uses Pico CSS for styling. It's a minmal setup that you can build on.

When you first run the project you will probably notice that no styling is applied. This is because the first time you run the project with make up the compiled frontend files won't be available. Just run the frontend build scripts below and refresh the page.

JavaScript

The project make no assumption about JavaScript libraries. You can add your own as needed.

Build tools

The project uses SASS for CSS compilation and esbuild for JavaScript bundling. You can run the build tools with the following commands:

nvm use
npm install
npm start

npm start will also run BrowserSync to reload the browser when changes are made, it makes your site available at http://localhost:3000

You will need to make sure the Django server is running at the same time.

Styleguide module

The project includes a styleguide page at http://localhost:8000/styleguide/ which demonstrates the Pico CSS classless styling and includes some common HTML elements.

The styleguide is available only in debug mode. If required you can remove the style guide from the project by removing the styleguide app from the INSTALLED_APPS in base.py.

Deployment

Currenyly there is no deployment setup included in this project. You could try this Wagtail deployment guide for some ideas.

There's also a tutorial here on how to deploy a Wagtail site to PythonAnywhere

Contributing

If you have any suggestions or improvements, please open an issue or a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Development suggestions

Sepecific suggestions for development are Comming soon... but for the moment I'd suggest you take a look at the Wagtail documentation