9. Integrating a third-party application#

We’ve already written our own django CMS plugins and apps, but now we want to extend our CMS with a third-party application, Djangocms-Blog.

9.1. Basic installation#

First, we need to install the app into our virtual environment from PyPI:

pip install djangocms-blog

9.2. Django settings#

9.2.1. INSTALLED_APPS#

Add the application and any of its requirements that are not there already to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py. Some will be already present; it’s up to you to check them because you need to avoid duplication:

# you will probably need to add:
'filer',
'easy_thumbnails',
'aldryn_apphooks_config',
'parler',
'taggit',
'taggit_autosuggest',
'meta',
'sortedm2m',
'djangocms_blog',

9.2.2. THUMBNAIL_PROCESSORS#

One of the dependencies is Django Filer. It provides a special feature that allows more sophisticated image cropping.

THUMBNAIL_PROCESSORS = (
    'easy_thumbnails.processors.colorspace',
    'easy_thumbnails.processors.autocrop',
    'filer.thumbnail_processors.scale_and_crop_with_subject_location',
    'easy_thumbnails.processors.filters',
)

META_SITE_PROTOCOL = 'https'  # set 'http' for non ssl enabled websites
META_USE_SITES = True

9.2.3. URL Patterns#

Add the following url pattern to the main urls.py:

urlpatterns += [
    url(r'^taggit_autosuggest/', include('taggit_autosuggest.urls')),
]

9.3. Migrate the database#

We’ve added a new application so we need to update our database:

python manage.py migrate

Start the server again.

9.4. Create a new apphooked page#

The News & Blog application comes with a django CMS apphook, so add a new django CMS page (call it Blog), and add the Blog application to it just as you did for Polls.

For this application we also need to create and select an Application configuration.

Give this application configuration some settings:

  • Instance namespace: article (this is used for reversing URLs)

  • Application title: Blog (the name that will represent the application configuration in the admin)

  • Permalink type: choose a format you prefer for news article URLs

Save this application configuration, and make sure it’s selected in Application configurations.

Publish the new page, and you should find the Blog application at work there. (Until you actually create any articles, it will simply inform you that there are No items available.)

9.5. Add new News & Blog articles#

You can add new articles using the admin or the new Blog menu that now appears in the toolbar when you are on a page belonging to Blog.