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I hate repetitive anything, so you can understand my frustration typing the following to start the Django development server:

cd PROJECT_DIRECTORY
python manage.py runserver

So I decided to make a quick BASH alias, so I only type 4 characters per project.  Assuming you’re using Ubuntu, let’s edit our BASH config file:

nano ~/.bashrc
#At the bottom of the file, add this line, replacing it with the path to your project directory
alias djan:'python ~/programming/project/manage.py runserver'

A few quick tips I’ve found to be handy:

1. Do one per Django project, so you can quickly open a terminal, type 4 characters, and have the dev server up.
2. You can do this for any of the manage.py commands (syncdb, etc)
3. You can also do another alias for just the runserver command, not specific to any project like this:

alias dj='python manage.py runserver'

Of course, that requires you to be in the directory of the Django project, but I spend a lot of my terminal time there, so this makes sense. Here’s an example of it running:

josh@josh-desktop:~$ mlio
Validating models...
0 errors found

Django version 1.2.3, using settings 'MyLifeIsOpen.settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

Easy, right?

If you use any awesome time savers like this in Django, please post them in the comments so we can all save time!

About Josh Gachnang

Josh Gachnang is a small business consultant with 5 years of experience in developing IT systems. His specialties include moving IT infrastructure to the cloud, standard and mobile web development using Python and Django, and promoting with social media. Django