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Adding django-var-cms to an existing Django project takes only a few minutes. The library ships as a standard Django app — install the package, register it in INSTALLED_APPS, wire up the URLs, and run migrations. No database schema changes are needed beyond Django’s own auth tables.
1

Install the package

Install django-var-cms together with its required dependencies. Pillow is needed for image processing and WhiteNoise for serving static files in production.
pip install django-var-cms pillow whitenoise
The [tailwind] extra installs django-tailwind-cli, which lets you compile utility-first Tailwind styles for your own templates alongside the CMS. See the Optional Dependencies section below for details on all available extras.
2

Configure settings.py

Add "var_cms" to INSTALLED_APPS and set the required static/media and authentication settings:
settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # Django standard apps
    "django.contrib.admin",
    "django.contrib.auth",
    "django.contrib.contenttypes",
    "django.contrib.sessions",
    "django.contrib.messages",
    "django.contrib.staticfiles",
    # django-var-cms
    "var_cms",
    # your apps
    "myapp",
]

# Media settings — required for file upload and image crop/convert APIs
MEDIA_URL = "/media/"
MEDIA_ROOT = BASE_DIR / "media"

# Static files settings
STATIC_URL = "/static/"
STATICFILES_DIRS = [BASE_DIR / "static"]
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / "staticfiles"

# Authentication redirects — point Django's login machinery at the CMS
LOGIN_URL = "/var-cms/login/"
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = "/var-cms/"
LOGIN_URL and LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL are standard Django settings. Setting them to the CMS paths ensures that @login_required decorators used internally redirect unauthenticated users to the glassmorphic CMS login page rather than Django’s default /accounts/login/.
You can also customise the CMS branding directly in settings.py using the VAR_CMS_* prefix:
settings.py
VAR_CMS_SITE_HEADER  = "MY BRAND"          # Header title
VAR_CMS_SITE_SUB     = "ADMIN PANEL"        # Subtitle
VAR_CMS_SITE_URL     = "/"                  # "View Site" link target
VAR_CMS_LOGO_URL     = "/static/logo.png"   # Custom brand logo
VAR_CMS_ACCENT_COLOR = "142, 72%, 45%"      # HSL accent color (emerald green)
VAR_CMS_ENABLE_OTP   = False                # Set True to enable email OTP 2FA
3

Add URL routing

Include var_cms.urls in your project’s root urls.py. Use namespace="var_cms" — this is required for the internal reverse() calls to resolve correctly.
urls.py
from django.urls import path, include
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static

urlpatterns = [
    # ... other paths
    path("var-cms/", include("var_cms.urls", namespace="var_cms")),
]

# Serve uploaded media files during local development
if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
The static(...) helper only serves files in development (DEBUG=True). In production, configure your web server (nginx, Caddy, etc.) or a cloud storage backend to serve the MEDIA_ROOT directory instead.
4

Run migrations

django-var-cms does not add any custom database tables of its own, but it depends on Django’s built-in auth and sessions apps. Run migrations to make sure all tables are in place:
python manage.py migrate
Then start the development server and navigate to the dashboard:
python manage.py runserver
Open http://127.0.0.1:8000/var-cms/ and log in with a Django superuser account. If you don’t have one yet, create it first:
python manage.py createsuperuser

​
Optional Dependencies

django-var-cms ships three optional extras declared in pyproject.toml. Install any combination of them depending on your project’s needs:
ExtraInstallsWhen to use
[tailwind]django-tailwind-cli >= 2.0Compile Tailwind CSS utility styles for custom frontend templates. Run python manage.py tailwind build (production) or python manage.py tailwind start (dev with hot reload).
[geo]django[gis] >= 5.0Register models that contain GeoDjango spatial fields (PointField, PolygonField, etc.). Requires PostGIS or SpatiaLite.
[pdf]pdf2image >= 1.16Enable PDF thumbnail generation in the media conversion API. Requires poppler-utils to be installed at the OS level.
# Install multiple extras at once
pip install "django-var-cms[tailwind,geo,pdf]"

​
Static Files in Production

django-var-cms bundles its own CSS, JavaScript, and icon assets. In production, run collectstatic and serve the STATIC_ROOT directory through WhiteNoise or your web server: 
python manage.py collectstatic
To enable WhiteNoise, add its middleware to MIDDLEWARE immediately after SecurityMiddleware:
settings.py
MIDDLEWARE = [
    "django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware",
    "whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware",  # ← add this line
    # ... rest of middleware
]
WhiteNoise is already a hard dependency of django-var-cms, so no extra install step is needed — just add the middleware entry.

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