Django Hosting
Wow it has been a crazy two weeks. My boss has gone on holiday to Scotland for three weeks and left me to manage stuff. Let’s just say that I have a new respect for him. Trying to manage customers, people and your own work is damn hectic.
Anyway, somewhere along the line I found the time to get quite a lot of my personal project done. I must say the more I use Python and Django the more I wish I found it a long llooonnnngggg time ago 
That being said it is time for me to look into some hosting solutions as I put the finishing touches on the project.
The Django site has a list of known Django hosting companies. One that does scream out to me is Web Faction. You can get a basic package with Django support for as little as $7.50 a month and they even have a screencast detailing the steps needed to install a Django application on their servers with their control panel software. Basically it looks really simple.
On the other hand I have given Budget Dedicated a try. They offer a wide range of Linux images to use for your own virtual server that you have 100% control over. I tried the Ubuntu – obviously – version with their 7 day free trial period offer. Up and running in minutes and then you have the choice as to exactly what you want to install like a normal Ubuntu box using adept etc.
For ease though I am really leaning towards Web Faction. Where you host your Django application? Leave a comment and let me know, Thanks 
We have a ton of Django sites, all hosting from Webfaction.
Honestly, the *real* reason we chose Webfaction was because there seem to be very few companies providing shared hosting with mod_python. Also, we were somewhat naive and expected installing Django and tweaking Apache to be a difficult process, and therefore wanted an ‘works out of the box’ setup. After using it, I can say it’s really quite simple to set up.
Webfaction has been *awesome* as far as support goes. They respond to requests prompty, have great forums/screencasts, and even went out of their way to accommodate us when one of our sites got on the Digg Top 10. We have had some issues with performance, especially RAM usage, that we can’t seem to solve even when following their advice.
We’re thinking of moving some of our larger apps to Joyent. Virtualization + Django = bliss.
Kyle,
Up until about a week ago the version of mod_python that we were using had a couple of known memory leaks, perhaps they had something to do with it. If you replace the path to mod_python.so in your httpd.conf with /etc/httpd/modules/mod_python.so and restart your application of type Django’s instance of Apache you should be good. Note that we’ve also recompiled Python with “–enabled-shared” on all servers so mod_python.so is roughly 250 KB instead of roughly 5 MB so that should save you some memory. If that still doesn’t work submit a support ticket and I’ll take a look.
Christopher,
I’m a Djangonaut and I host my Django projects with WebFaction, but I am a little bias.
David,
That’s cool. Honestly that’s our only issue with Webfaction (we’re very happy otherwise). Thanks for letting me know.
Webfaction hosting all the way. I’ve been with them for a year now and they are absolutely the best host I’ve ever worked with. Easy to set up and super fast to deploy all Django applications.
They take care of people, here is my personal experience:
http://blog.awarelabs.com/?p=7
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