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Deployment Guide

Deploying ioVote to a production environment ensures that it is accessible to users in a secure and scalable manner. This guide will walk you through the steps to deploy the project on a cloud-based hosting provider.

1. Choosing a Hosting Provider

There are several options for hosting a Django application. Some popular choices include:

  • Heroku – Easy deployment, managed PostgreSQL, free tier available.
  • DigitalOcean – Full control over the server, requires manual setup.
  • AWS (EC2, RDS) – Scalable and highly configurable, but complex to set up.
  • PythonAnywhere – A simpler, Python-specific hosting platform.

For this guide, we will focus on deploying using Heroku as it is beginner-friendly and requires minimal setup.

2. Setting Up a Production Environment

Before deploying, prepare your production environment:

git clone https://github.com/Wolodmr/iovote.git
cd iovote

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

pip install -r requirements.txt

python manage.py migrate

python manage.py migrate

3. Configuring Environment Variables

In production, sensitive information should not be hardcoded. Instead, use an .env file.

SECRET_KEY=your-production-secret-key
DEBUG=False
ALLOWED_HOSTS=yourdomain.com
DATABASE_URL=your-database-url

Update settings.py:

import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()

SECRET_KEY = os.getenv('SECRET_KEY')
DEBUG = os.getenv('DEBUG', 'False') == 'True'
ALLOWED_HOSTS = os.getenv('ALLOWED_HOSTS', '').split(',')

(And continue with the rest of the guide following this structure.)