By James Cooley - August 01 2007 tags: django instantdjango

The killer feature of Django is its community. I never made the jump to Rails but Instant Rails got my attention a while back.

Instant Rails a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not modify your system environment.
A contribution from the Django community - Instant Django takes the spirit of Instant Rails creates a nice Django distribution that can be run from a USB key (>70M). It doesn't come with Apache or MySQL but uses Django's web server and SQLite for the same effect. It's easy to move used different well documented deployment options if you want to take it further. It currently ships with Python 2.5, ExeMaker, Notepad++, and a Subversion client so you can pull the latest Django version directly from the repository.

It also provides a tutorial on getting a Chicago crime-like site mash-up working with Google Maps. This is a separate download with instructions on how to use it.

If you haven't used Django before make sure to read the Django Tutorial and the Instant Django Chicago Crime tutorial if you get stuck.

This kind of project is frequently ignored by users comfortable with a language and environment but is great for potential adopters who don't want to waste an afternoon getting the various bits installed. It's an an efficient lurker to user converter. Nice work.