These are the source files for the internal website that I use to teach my course OTIS. It is pretty standard Django, so you should be able to spin up a local server on a standard Unix environment.
The production server is hosted by PythonAnywhere, which is great.
Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/W27XcqeXp20
If you're just trying to get a local copy of the OTIS-WEB code
and don't plan to submit any code back, then skip steps 0 and 3,
and replace YOUR_USERNAME in step 2 with vEnhance.
-
Create an account on GitHub if you haven't already, and fork the repository.
-
Install the following standard tools:
python(version 3.13+),git, and uv. -
Clone this repository using the command
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/otis-web. -
Type
git checkout -b featureto checkout a new branch namedfeature; this will make your life a bit easier than working onmain. If you already know what feature you're trying to implement, you can use that, e.g.git checkout -b add-bunny-pictures. -
Check that
uvworks. Then runmake install.On some systems, installation could fail when trying to install
mysqlclient. You will have to separately installpkg-configmysql in that case; see that link for instructions, under the "Install" section. -
If everything is working,
uv run python manage.py checkshould run with no errors. -
Run
make migrateto create the local database. -
Run
make createsuperuserto create an admin user. -
Run
make runserver. The command will spin up a continuously running server. -
Point your browser to
http://127.0.0.1:8000. You should be able to log in with the user from before. -
The website is functional now, but it is a bit bare-bones. To populate it with some test data, use
http://127.0.0.1:8000/adminor run./fixtures/load-all.sh.- To log in with the dummy accounts in the fixtures, it's easiest to log in with the superuser account and then use the hijack feature.
Optional steps:
- If you need to set up environment variables,
copy
envto.envand uncomment the relevant lines. - If you want to test the Stripe stuff, a few more steps are needed.
Briefly: install the Stripe CLI.
Create some API keys and
stripe login. Add these API keys to.env(the threeSTRIPE_*variables). Then runstripe listen --forward-to localhost:8000/payments/webhook/.
- Follow steps 0 - 2 from the above tutorial.
- Make sure to install Docker and make sure you download a version compatible with your computer.
- Set up the 3 environment variables at the bottom of
envby copying them to.envand uncommenting them. Note that you should not have any spaces (it is fine to leave the values as it is, but if you want to change anything, just make sure there is no whitespace surrounding the=). - Run
docker compose build. Wait for it to finish. - To start the server, run
docker compose up -d. To execute a command inside the container, rundocker exec -it otis-web /bin/bash. To stop the server, rundocker compose down. - Follow steps 10 - 11 from above.
Note: You may need to delete db.sqlite3 if you're not getting desired results, as it serves as a cache. At this point, spinning up 2 separate containers with separate data stores is not supported.
Submit an issue on GitHub.
For OTIS students: pull requests welcome! If you think the website can be improved in some way, feel free to implement it. See contributing guidelines. It's OK if you don't have much code experience; I'm willing to guide you along.
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