What Wagtail actually is

What this episode covers

First, the question nobody answers clearly: what is Wagtail? It is not an alternative to Django, it runs on Django. We compare it to plain Django, to the Django admin and to WordPress, and say where each one actually wins.

Also covered: why you should never name a Django project “site”, because Python already has a module with that name; and why we pin both Wagtail and Django, since Wagtail 7.4 declares a minimum of Django 5.2 with no upper limit, so an unpinned install will not match what is on screen.

No database to install. SQLite ships inside Python, and Postgres arrives in episode 13.

Chapters

1. 0:00 What you'll have by the end
2. 0:20 Wagtail vs Django vs WordPress
3. 0:40 But Django already has an admin?
4. 1:02 The one-sentence version
5. 1:14 A folder and a virtualenv
6. 1:35 Installing Wagtail
7. 1:53 Why pin Django too?
8. 2:14 Creating the project
9. 2:20 Those two arguments
10. 2:41 Never name your project “site”
11. 3:04 migrate — 184 migrations before you write any code
12. 3:21 No database server
13. 3:40 createsuperuser
14. 3:52 Running it
15. 3:59 The two addresses
16. 4:15 One page already exists
17. 4:36 git and the episode tag
18. 4:50 Next episode

Versions on screen

Wagtail 7.4.3 · Django 6.1.1 · Python 3.12. Recorded on Windows; macOS and Linux commands are in the repository for every episode.