On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Taylor Smith <cy198pr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Our new website is being built on Django and we are trying to figure out the > easiest way to host and maintain the site. > It seems there are a few managed hosting options like webfaction and heroku, > but they will only handle the linux and database patches and updates. > > I am hoping to find out how often Django need to be updated. -- like every > month? or more like one or twice a year? > can a non-developer handle these updates or would we be better off hiring > someone?
At any given time, Django has three supported versions: * The current development trunk, updated on a daily basis. This isn't a packaged version; it's just the current 'tip' of the code repository. * The current Stable release (currently 1.4) * The current Security release (currently 1.3) We publish a new stable release roughly every 12 months, at which point the current stable moves to security, and the security release becomes unsupported. So - somewhere around the end of this year, you can expect to see a 1.5 stable release announced, which will make 1.4 the security release, and 1.3 will become unsupported. This means that if you write code against the current stable Django release, you've probably got about 2 years before you will need to look at doing a major version upgrade. If we are notified of a security problem, we will make a point release for the stable and security versions. These releases are entirely dictated by the reporting of security issues, so there's no formal schedule -- however, historically, there is generally a couple of months between security releases. When a security release happens, upgrades are generally pretty simple. The update process is generally not much more complicated than "pip install -u django" (or whatever equivalent is appropriate for your deployment platform). Security releases are announced on the django-announce mailing list, as well as on our blog. On larger version updates, there are sometimes some minor changes between versions. However, we're aggressive about backwards compatibility, and phasing in changes slowly, so you'll always have plenty of warning if a change is coming; we document all the changes in our release notes; and where possible, we raise runtime warnings letting you know of potential problems that may occur in the future as a result of feature changes. So - in summary, you're probably looking at no more than a handful of updates a year, and the upgrade process is generally pretty simple. Whether a "non-developer" can handle the updates will really depend on how far "non-developer" they are. The minor release updates shouldn't pose any real difficulty. If you've got someone who is happy to manage a server, they should be able to manage a minor Django update. The major updates (every 1-2 years) will require a little bit more attention to detail. Yours Russ Magee %-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en.
