Configuration

django CMS has a number of settings to configure its behaviour. These should be available in your settings.py file.

The INSTALLED_APPS setting

The ordering of items in INSTALLED_APPS matters. Entries for applications with plugins should come after cms.

The MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting

cms.middleware.utils.ApphookReloadMiddleware

Adding ApphookReloadMiddleware to the MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES tuple will enable automatic server restarts when changes are made to apphook configurations. It should be placed as near to the top of the classes as possible.

Note

This has been tested and works in many production environments and deployment configurations, but we haven’t been able to test it with all possible set-ups. Please file an issue if you discover one where it fails.

Custom User Requirements

When using a custom user model (i.e. the AUTH_USER_MODEL Django setting), there are a few requirements that must be met.

django CMS expects a user model with at minimum the following fields: email, password, is_active, is_staff, and is_superuser. Additionally, it should inherit from AbstractBaseUser and PermissionsMixin (or AbstractUser), and must define one field as the USERNAME_FIELD (see Django documentation for more details) and define a get_full_name() method.

The models must also be editable via Django’s admin and have an admin class registered.

Additionally, the application in which the model is defined must be loaded before cms in INSTALLED_APPS.

Note

In most cases, it is better to create a UserProfile model with a one to one relationship to auth.User rather than creating a custom user model. Custom user models are only necessary if you intended to alter the default behaviour of the User model, not simply extend it.

Additionally, if you do intend to use a custom user model, it is generally advisable to do so only at the beginning of a project, before the database is created.

Required Settings

CMS_TEMPLATES

default

() (Not a valid setting!)

A list of templates you can select for a page.

Example:

CMS_TEMPLATES = (
    ('base.html', gettext('default')),
    ('2col.html', gettext('2 Column')),
    ('3col.html', gettext('3 Column')),
    ('extra.html', gettext('Some extra fancy template')),
)

Note

All templates defined in CMS_TEMPLATES must contain at least the js and css sekizai namespaces. For an example, see Templates.

Note

Alternatively you can use CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR to define a directory containing templates for django CMS.

Warning

django CMS requires some special templates to function correctly. These are provided within cms/templates/cms. You are strongly advised not to use cms as a directory name for your own project templates.

Basic Customisation

CMS_TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE

default

True

Enables the inheritance of templates from parent pages.

When enabled, pages’ Template options will include a new default: Inherit from the parent page (unless the page is a root page).

CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR

default

None

Instead of explicitly providing a set of templates via CMS_TEMPLATES a directory can be provided using this configuration.

CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR can be set to the (absolute) path of the templates directory, or set to a dictionary with SITE_ID: template path items:

CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR: {
    1: '/absolute/path/for/site/1/',
    2: '/absolute/path/for/site/2/',
}

The provided directory is scanned and all templates in it are loaded as templates for django CMS.

Template loaded and their names can be customised using the templates dir as a python module, by creating a __init__.py file in the templates directory. The file contains a single TEMPLATES dictionary with the list of templates as keys and template names as values:::

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
TEMPLATES = {
    'col_two.html': _('Two columns'),
    'col_three.html': _('Three columns'),
}

Being a normal python file, templates labels can be passed through gettext for translation.

Note

As templates are still loaded by the Django template loader, the given directory must be reachable by the template loading system. Currently filesystem and app_directory loader schemas are tested and supported.

CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF

default

{}

Used to configure placeholders. If not given, all plugins will be available in all placeholders.

Example:

CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF = {
    None: {
        "plugins": ['TextPlugin'],
        'excluded_plugins': ['InheritPlugin'],
    },
    'content': {
        'plugins': ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin'],
        'text_only_plugins': ['LinkPlugin'],
        'extra_context': {"width":640},
        'name': gettext("Content"),
        'language_fallback': True,
        'default_plugins': [
            {
                'plugin_type': 'TextPlugin',
                'values': {
                    'body':'<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...</p>',
                },
            },
        ],
        'child_classes': {
            'TextPlugin': ['PicturePlugin', 'LinkPlugin'],
        },
        'parent_classes': {
            'LinkPlugin': ['TextPlugin'],
        },
    },
    'right-column': {
        "plugins": ['TeaserPlugin', 'LinkPlugin'],
        "extra_context": {"width": 280},
        'name': gettext("Right Column"),
        'limits': {
            'global': 2,
            'TeaserPlugin': 1,
            'LinkPlugin': 1,
        },
        'plugin_modules': {
            'LinkPlugin': 'Extra',
        },
        'plugin_labels': {
            'LinkPlugin': 'Add a link',
        },
    },
    'base.html content': {
        "plugins": ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin', 'TeaserPlugin'],
        'inherit': 'content',
    },
}

You can combine template names and placeholder names to define plugins in a granular fashion, as shown above with base.html content.

Configuration is retrieved in the following order:

• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[‘template placeholder’]
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[‘placeholder’]
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[‘template’]
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[None]

The first CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF key that matches for the required configuration attribute is used.

E.g: given the example above if the plugins configuration is retrieved for the content placeholder in a page using the base.html template, the value ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin', 'TeaserPlugin'] will be returned as 'base.html content' matches; if the same configuration is retrieved for the content placeholder in a page using fullwidth.html template, the returned value will be ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin']. If plugins configuration is retrieved for sidebar_left placeholder, ['TextPlugin'] from CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF key None will be returned.

plugins

A list of plugins that can be added to this placeholder. If not supplied, all plugins can be selected.

text_only_plugins

A list of additional plugins available only in the TextPlugin, these plugins can’t be added directly to this placeholder.

excluded_plugins

A list of plugins that will not be added to the given placeholder; this takes precedence over plugins configuration: if a plugin is present in both lists, it will not be available in the placeholder. This is basically a way to blacklist a plugin: even if registered, it will not be available in the placeholder. If set on the None (default) key, the plugins will not be available in any placeholder (except the excluded_plugins configuration is overridden in more specific CMS_PLACEHOLDER_KEYS.

extra_context

Extra context that plugins in this placeholder receive.

name

The name displayed in the Django admin. With the gettext stub, the name can be internationalised.

limits

Limit the number of plugins that can be placed inside this placeholder. Dictionary keys are plugin names and the values are their respective limits. Special case: global - Limit the absolute number of plugins in this placeholder regardless of type (takes precedence over the type-specific limits).

language_fallback

When True, if the placeholder has no plugin for the current language it falls back to the fallback languages as specified in CMS_LANGUAGES. Defaults to True since version 3.1.

default_plugins

You can specify the list of default plugins which will be automatically added when the placeholder will be created (or rendered). Each element of the list is a dictionary with following keys :

• plugin_type

  The plugin type to add to the placeholder Example : TextPlugin

  values

  Dictionary to use for the plugin creation. It depends on the plugin_type. See the documentation of each plugin type to see which parameters are required and available. Example for a text plugin: {'body':'<p>Lorem ipsum</p>'} Example for a link plugin: {'name':'Django-CMS','url':'https://www.django-cms.org'}

  children

  It is a list of dictionaries to configure default plugins to add as children for the current plugin (it must accepts children). Each dictionary accepts same args than dictionaries of default_plugins : plugin_type, values, children (yes, it is recursive).

Complete example of default_plugins usage:

CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF = {
    'content': {
        'name' : _('Content'),
        'plugins': ['TextPlugin', 'LinkPlugin'],
        'default_plugins':[
            {
                'plugin_type':'TextPlugin',
                'values':{
                    'body':'<p>Great websites : %(_tag_child_1)s and %(_tag_child_2)s</p>'
                },
                'children':[
                    {
                        'plugin_type':'LinkPlugin',
                        'values':{
                            'name':'django',
                            'url':'https://www.djangoproject.com/'
                        },
                    },
                    {
                        'plugin_type':'LinkPlugin',
                        'values':{
                            'name':'django-cms',
                            'url':'https://www.django-cms.org'
                        },
                        # If using LinkPlugin from djangocms-link which
                        # accepts children, you could add some grandchildren :
                        # 'children' : [
                        #     ...
                        # ]
                    },
                ]
            },
        ]
    }
}

plugin_modules

A dictionary of plugins and custom module names to group plugin in the toolbar UI.

plugin_labels

A dictionary of plugins and custom labels to show in the toolbar UI.

child_classes

A dictionary of plugin names with lists describing which plugins may be placed inside each plugin. If not supplied, all plugins can be selected.

parent_classes

A dictionary of plugin names with lists describing which plugins may contain each plugin. If not supplied, all plugins can be selected.

require_parent

A Boolean indication whether that plugin requires another plugin as parent or not.

inherit

Placeholder name or template name + placeholder name which inherit. In the example, the configuration for base.html content inherits from content and just overwrites the plugins setting to allow TeaserPlugin, thus you have not to duplicate the configuration of content.

CMS_PLUGIN_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

default

[]

A list of plugin context processors. Plugin context processors are callables that modify all plugins’ context before rendering. See How to create custom Plugins for more information.

CMS_PLUGIN_PROCESSORS

default

[]

A list of plugin processors. Plugin processors are callables that modify all plugins’ output after rendering. See How to create custom Plugins for more information.

CMS_APPHOOKS

default:

()

A list of import paths for cms.app_base.CMSApp sub-classes.

By default, apphooks are auto-discovered in applications listed in all INSTALLED_APPS, by trying to import their cms_app module.

When CMS_APPHOOKS is set, auto-discovery is disabled.

Example:

CMS_APPHOOKS = (
    'myapp.cms_app.MyApp',
    'otherapp.cms_app.MyFancyApp',
    'sampleapp.cms_app.SampleApp',
)

Internationalisation and localisation (I18N and L10N)

CMS_LANGUAGES

default

Value of LANGUAGES converted to this format

Defines the languages available in django CMS.

Example:

CMS_LANGUAGES = {
    1: [
        {
            'code': 'en',
            'name': gettext('English'),
            'fallbacks': ['de', 'fr'],
            'public': True,
            'hide_untranslated': True,
            'redirect_on_fallback': False,
        },
        {
            'code': 'de',
            'name': gettext('Deutsch'),
            'fallbacks': ['en', 'fr'],
            'public': True,
        },
        {
            'code': 'fr',
            'name': gettext('French'),
            'public': False,
        },
    ],
    2: [
        {
            'code': 'nl',
            'name': gettext('Dutch'),
            'public': True,
            'fallbacks': ['en'],
        },
    ],
    'default': {
        'fallbacks': ['en', 'de', 'fr'],
        'redirect_on_fallback': True,
        'public': True,
        'hide_untranslated': False,
    }
}

Note

Make sure you only define languages which are also in LANGUAGES.

Warning

Make sure you use language codes (en-us) and not locale names (en_US) here and in LANGUAGES. Use check command to check for correct syntax.

CMS_LANGUAGES has different options where you can define how different languages behave, with granular control.

On the first level you can set values for each SITE_ID. In the example above we define two sites. The first site has 3 languages (English, German and French) and the second site has only Dutch.

The default node defines default behaviour for all languages. You can overwrite the default settings with language-specific properties. For example we define hide_untranslated as False globally, but the English language overwrites this behaviour.

Every language node needs at least a code and a name property. code is the ISO 2 code for the language, and name is the verbose name of the language.

Note

With a gettext() lambda function you can make language names translatable. To enable this add gettext = lambda s: s at the beginning of your settings file.

What are the properties a language node can have?

code

String. RFC5646 code of the language.

example

"en".

Note

Is required for every language.

name

String. The verbose name of the language.

Note

Is required for every language.

public

Determines whether this language is accessible in the frontend. You may want for example to keep a language private until your content has been fully translated.

type

Boolean

default

True

fallbacks

A list of alternative languages, in order of preference, that are to be used if a page is not translated yet..

example

['de', 'fr']

default

[]

hide_untranslated

Hides untranslated pages in menus.

When applied to the default directive, if False, all pages in menus will be listed in all languages, including those that don’t yet have content in a particular language. If True, untranslated pages will be hidden.

When applied to a particular language, hides that language’s pages in menus until translations exist for them.

type

Boolean

default

True

redirect_on_fallback

Determines behaviour when the preferred language is not available. If True, will redirect to the URL of the same page in the fallback language. If False, the content will be displayed in the fallback language, but there will be no redirect.

Note that this applies to the fallback behaviour of pages. Starting for 3.1 placeholders will default to the same behaviour. If you do not want a placeholder to follow a page’s fallback behaviour, you must set its language_fallback to False in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF, above.

type

Boolean

default

True

Unicode support for automated slugs

If your site has languages which use non-ASCII character sets, CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST and CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION will allow it to automate slug generation for those languages too.

Support for this is provided by the unihandecode.js project.

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST

default

None

Must be set to the URL where you host your unihandecode.js files. For licensing reasons, django CMS does not include unihandecode.js.

If set to None, the default, unihandecode.js is not used.

Note

Unihandecode.js is a rather large library, especially when loading support for Japanese. It is therefore very important that you serve it from a server that supports gzip compression. Further, make sure that those files can be cached by the browser for a very long period.

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION

default

None

Must be set to the version number (eg '1.0.0') you want to use. Together with CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST this setting is used to build the full URLs for the javascript files. URLs are built like this: <CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST>-<CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION>.<DECODER>.min.js.

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS

default

['ja', 'zh', 'vn', 'kr', 'diacritic']

If you add additional decoders to your CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST, you can add them to this setting.

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DEFAULT_DECODER

default

'diacritic'

The default decoder to use when unihandecode.js support is enabled, but the current language does not provide a specific decoder in CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS. If set to None, failing to find a specific decoder will disable unihandecode.js for this language.

Example

Add these to your project’s settings:

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST = '/static/unihandecode/'
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION = '1.0.0'
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS = ['ja', 'zh', 'vn', 'kr', 'diacritic']

Add the library files from GitHub ojii/unihandecode.js tree/dist to your static folder:

project/
    static/
        unihandecode/
            unihandecode-1.0.0.core.min.js
            unihandecode-1.0.0.diacritic.min.js
            unihandecode-1.0.0.ja.min.js
            unihandecode-1.0.0.kr.min.js
            unihandecode-1.0.0.vn.min.js
            unihandecode-1.0.0.zh.min.js

More documentation is available on unihandecode.js’ Read the Docs.

Media Settings

CMS_MEDIA_PATH

default

cms/

The path from MEDIA_ROOT to the media files located in cms/media/

CMS_MEDIA_ROOT

default

MEDIA_ROOT + CMS_MEDIA_PATH

The path to the media root of the cms media files.

CMS_MEDIA_URL

default

MEDIA_URL + CMS_MEDIA_PATH

The location of the media files that are located in cms/media/cms/

CMS_PAGE_MEDIA_PATH

default

'cms_page_media/'

By default, django CMS creates a folder called cms_page_media in your static files folder where all uploaded media files are stored. The media files are stored in sub-folders numbered with the id of the page.

You need to ensure that the directory to which it points is writeable by the user under which Django will be running.

Advanced Settings

CMS_INTERNAL_IPS

default

[]

By default CMS_INTERNAL_IPS is an empty list ([]).

If left as an empty list, this setting does not add any restrictions to the toolbar. However, if set, the toolbar will only appear for client IP addresses that are in this list.

This setting may also be set to an IpRangeList from the external package iptools. This package allows convenient syntax for defining complex IP address ranges.

The client IP address is obtained via the CMS_REQUEST_IP_RESOLVER in the cms.middleware.toolbar.ToolbarMiddleware middleware.

CMS_REQUEST_IP_RESOLVER

default

‘cms.utils.request_ip_resolvers.default_request_ip_resolver’

This setting is used system-wide to provide a consistent and plug-able means of extracting a client IP address from the HTTP request. The default implementation should work for most project architectures, but if not, the administrator can provide their own method to handle the project’s specific circumstances.

The supplied method should accept a single argument request and return an IP address String.

CMS_PERMISSION

default

False

When enabled, 3 new models are provided in Admin:

• Pages global permissions
• User groups - page
• Users - page

In the edit-view of the pages you can now assign users to pages and grant them permissions. In the global permissions you can set the permissions for users globally.

If a user has the right to create new users he can now do so in the “Users - page”, but he will only see the users he created. The users he created can also only inherit the rights he has. So if he only has been granted the right to edit a certain page all users he creates can, in turn, only edit this page. Naturally he can limit the rights of the users he creates even further, allowing them to see only a subset of the pages to which he is allowed access.

CMS_RAW_ID_USERS

default

False

This setting only applies if CMS_PERMISSION is True

The view restrictions and page permissions inlines on the cms.models.Page admin change forms can cause performance problems where there are many thousands of users being put into simple select boxes. If set to a positive integer, this setting forces the inlines on that page to use standard Django admin raw ID widgets rather than select boxes if the number of users in the system is greater than that number, dramatically improving performance.

Note

Using raw ID fields in combination with limit_choices_to causes errors due to excessively long URLs if you have many thousands of users (the PKs are all included in the URL of the popup window). For this reason, we only apply this limit if the number of users is relatively small (fewer than 500). If the number of users we need to limit to is greater than that, we use the usual input field instead unless the user is a CMS superuser, in which case we bypass the limit. Unfortunately, this means that non-superusers won’t see any benefit from this setting.

Changed in version 3.2.1:: CMS_RAW_ID_USERS also applies to GlobalPagePermission admin.

CMS_PUBLIC_FOR

default

all

Determines whether pages without any view restrictions are public by default or staff only. Possible values are all and staff.

CMS_CACHE_DURATIONS

This dictionary carries the various cache duration settings.

'content'

default

60

Cache expiration (in seconds) for show_placeholder, page_url, placeholder and static_placeholder template tags.

Note

This settings was previously called CMS_CONTENT_CACHE_DURATION

'menus'

default

3600

Cache expiration (in seconds) for the menu tree.

Note

This settings was previously called MENU_CACHE_DURATION

'permissions'

default

3600

Cache expiration (in seconds) for view and other permissions.

CMS_CACHE_PREFIX

default

cms-

The CMS will prepend the value associated with this key to every cache access (set and get). This is useful when you have several django CMS installations, and you don’t want them to share cache objects.

Example:

CMS_CACHE_PREFIX = 'mysite-live'

Note

Django 1.3 introduced a site-wide cache key prefix. See Django’s own docs on cache key prefixing

CMS_PAGE_CACHE

default

True

Should the output of pages be cached? Takes the language, and time zone into account. Pages for logged in users are not cached. If the toolbar is visible the page is not cached as well.

CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CACHE

default

True

Should the output of the various placeholder template tags be cached? Takes the current language and time zone into account. If the toolbar is in edit mode or a plugin with cache=False is present the placeholders will not be cached.

CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE

default

True

Default value of the cache attribute of plugins. Should plugins be cached by default if not set explicitly?

Warning

If you disable the plugin cache be sure to restart the server and clear the cache afterwards.

CMS_TOOLBARS

default

None

If defined, specifies the list of toolbar modifiers to be used to populate the toolbar as import paths. Otherwise, all available toolbars from both the CMS and the third-party apps will be loaded.

Example:

CMS_TOOLBARS = [
    # CMS Toolbars
    'cms.cms_toolbars.PlaceholderToolbar',
    'cms.cms_toolbars.BasicToolbar',
    'cms.cms_toolbars.PageToolbar',
    # third-party Toolbar
    'aldryn_blog.cms_toolbars.BlogToolbar',
]

CMS_TOOLBAR_ANONYMOUS_ON

default

True

This setting controls if anonymous users can see the CMS toolbar with a login form when ?edit is appended to a URL. The default behaviour is to show the toolbar to anonymous users.

CMS_TOOLBAR_HIDE

default

False

By default, the django CMS toolbar is displayed to logged-in admin users on all pages that use the {% cms_toolbar %} template tag. Its appearance can be optionally restricted to django CMS pages only (technically, pages that are rendered by a django CMS view).

When this is set to True, all other pages will no longer display the toolbar. This includes pages with apphooks applied to them, as they are handled by the other application’s views, and not django CMS’s.

Changed in version 3.2.1:: CMS_APP_NAME has been removed as it’s no longer required.

CMS_DEFAULT_X_FRAME_OPTIONS

default

constants.X_FRAME_OPTIONS_INHERIT

This setting is the default value for a Page’s X Frame Options setting. This should be an integer preferably taken from the cms.constants e.g.

• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_INHERIT
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_ALLOW
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_SAMEORIGIN
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_DENY

CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE

default:

True

The new structure board operates by default in “simple” mode. The older mode used absolute positioning. Setting this attribute to False will allow the absolute positioning used in versions prior to 3.2. This setting will be removed in 3.3.

Example:

CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE = False

CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE

default

TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE_MAGIC

This is the path of the template used to create pages in the wizard. It must be one of the templates in CMS_TEMPLATES.

CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER

default

None

When set to an editable, non-static placeholder that is available on the page template, the CMS page wizards will target the specified placeholder when adding any content supplied in the wizards’ “Content” field. If this is left unset, then the content will target the first suitable placeholder found on the page’s template.

CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN

default

TextPlugin

This is the name of the plugin created in the Page Wizard when the “Content” field is filled in. There should be no need to change it, unless you don’t use djangocms-text-ckeditor in your project.

CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY

default

body

This is the name of the body field in the plugin created in the Page Wizard when the “Content” field is filled in. There should be no need to change it, unless you don’t use djangocms-text-ckeditor in your project and your custom plugin defined in CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN have a body field different than body.