Django Cms PDF

django cms Documentation
Release 3.6.0rc1
Divio AG and contributors
Dec 12, 2018

Contents
1 Overview 3
1.1 Tutorials - start here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 How-to guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Key topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Join us online 5
3 Why django CMS? 7
4 Software version requirements and release notes 9

4.1 Django/Python compatibility table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Python Module Index 265
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django cms Documentation, Release 3.6.0rc1
Contents 1
2 Contents
CHAPTER 1
Overview
django CMS is a modern web publishing platform built with Django, the web application framework “for perfectionists
with deadlines”.
django CMS offers out-of-the-box support for the common features you’d expect from a CMS, but can also be easily
customised and extended by developers to create a site that is tailored to their precise needs.
1.1 Tutorials - start here
For the new django CMS developer, from installation to creating your own addon applications.
1.2 How-to guides
Practical step-by-step guides for the more experienced developer, covering several important topics.
1.3 Key topics
Explanation and analysis of some key concepts in django CMS.
1.4 Reference
Technical reference material, for classes, methods, APIs, commands.
3
4 Chapter 1. Overview
CHAPTER 2
Join us online
django CMS is supported by a friendly and very knowledgeable community.

Our IRC channel, #django-cms, is on irc.freenode.net. If you don’t have an IRC client, you can join our IRC
channel using the KiwiIRC web client, which works pretty well.
Our django CMS users email list is for general django CMS questions and discussion
Our django CMS developers email list is for discussions about the development of django CMS
5
6 Chapter 2. Join us online

CHAPTER 3
Why django CMS?
django CMS is a well-tested CMS platform that powers sites both large and small. Here are a few of the key features:
• robust internationalisation (i18n) support for creating multilingual sites
• front-end editing, providing rapid access to the content management interface
• support for a variety of editors with advanced text editing features.
• a flexible plugins system that lets developers put powerful tools at the fingertips of editors, without overwhelm-
ing them with a difficult interface
• . . . and much more
There are other capable Django-based CMS platforms but here’s why you should consider django CMS:
• thorough documentation
• easy and comprehensive integration into existing projects - django CMS isn’t a monolithic application
• a healthy, active and supportive developer community
• a strong culture of good code, including an emphasis on automated testing
7
8 Chapter 3. Why django CMS?

CHAPTER 4
Software version requirements and release notes
This document refers to version 3.6.0rc1.
4.1 Django/Python compatibility table
django Django Python

CMS
1.4/1.5 1.6/1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 2.0 2.1 2.6 2.7 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6
3.0.18 X X X X X X
3.1.7 X X X X X X
3.2.0 X X X X X X
3.2.1-3.2.5 X X X X X X X X
3.3.0-3.4.1 X X X X X X
3.4.2-3.4.4 X X X X X X X
3.4.5-3.5.x X X X X X X X X X
3.6.x X X X X X X X X
See the repository’s setup.py for more specific details of dependencies, or the Release notes & upgrade information
for information about what is required or has changed in particular versions of the CMS.
The installation how-to guide provides an overview of other packages required in a django CMS project.
4.1.1 Tutorials
The pages in this section of the documentation are aimed at the newcomer to django CMS. They’re designed to help
you get started quickly, and show how easy it is to work with django CMS as a developer who wants to customise it
and get it working according to their own requirements.
These tutorials take you step-by-step through some key aspects of this work. They’re not intended to explain the topics
in depth, or provide reference material, but they will leave you with a good idea of what it’s possible to achieve in just
a few steps, and how to go about it.
9
Once you’re familiar with the basics presented in these tutorials, you’ll find the more in-depth coverage of the same
topics in the How-to section.
The tutorials follow a logical progression, starting from installation of django CMS and the creation of a brand new
project, and build on each other, so it’s recommended to work through them in the order presented here.
Installing django CMS
We’ll get started by setting up our environment.
Requirements
django CMS requires Django 1.8 or newer, and Python 2.7 or 3.3 or newer. This tutorial assumes you are using Python
3.
Your working environment
We’re going to assume that you have a reasonably recent version of virtualenv installed and that you have some basic
familiarity with it.
Create and activate a virtual environment
python3.6 -m venv env # Python 2 usage: virtualenv env

source env/bin/activate
Note that if you’re using Windows, to activate the virtualenv you’ll need:
env\Scripts\activate
Update pip inside the virtual environment
pip is the Python installer. Make sure yours is up-to-date, as earlier versions can be less reliable:
pip install --upgrade pip
Use the django CMS installer
The django CMS installer is a helpful script that takes care of setting up a new project.
Install it:
pip install djangocms-installer
This provides you with a new command, djangocms.

Create a new directory to work in, and cd into it:
mkdir tutorial-project
cd tutorial-project
10 Chapter 4. Software version requirements and release notes

Run it to create a new Django project called mysite:
djangocms -f -p . mysite
This means:
• run the django CMS installer
• install Django Filer too (-f) - required for this tutorial
• use the current directory as the parent of the new project directory (-p .)
• call the new project directory mysite
Note: About Django Filer

Django Filer, a useful application for managing files and processing images. Although it’s not required for django
CMS itself, a vast number of django CMS addons use it, and nearly all django CMS projects have it installed. If you
know you won’t need it, omit the flag. See the django CMS installer documentation for more information.
Warning: djangocms-installer expects directory . to be empty at this stage, and will check for this, and will warn
if it’s not. You can get it to skip the check and go ahead anyway using the -s flag; note that this may overwrite
existing files.
Windows users may need to do a little extra to make sure Python files are associated correctly if that doesn’t work
right away:
assoc .py=Python.file
ftype Python.File="C:\Users\Username\workspace\demo\env\Scripts\python.exe" "%1" %*
By default, the installer runs in Batch mode, and sets up your new project with some default values.
Later, you may wish to manage some of these yourself, in which case you need to run it in Wizard mode. The default
in Batch mode is to set up an English-only project, which will be sufficient for the purposes of this tutorial. You can of
course simply edit the new project’s settings.py file at any time to change or add site languages or amend other
settings.
The installer creates an admin user for you, with username/password admin/admin.
Start up the runserver
python manage.py runserver
Open http://localhost:8000/ in your browser, where you should be invited to login, and then create a new page.
4.1. Django/Python compatibility table 11

Congratulations, you now have installed a fully functional CMS.

If you need to log in at any time, append ?edit to the URL and hit Return. This will enable the toolbar, from where
you can log in and manage your website.
If you are not already familiar with django CMS, you can take a few minutes to run through the basics of the django
CMS tutorial for users.
Templates & Placeholders
In this tutorial we’ll introduce Placeholders, and we’re also going to show how you can make your own HTML
templates CMS-ready.
Templates
You can use HTML templates to customise the look of your website, define Placeholders to mark sections for managed
content and use special tags to generate menus and more.
You can define multiple templates, with different layouts or built-in components, and choose them for each page as
required. A page’s template can be switched for another at any time.
You’ll find the site’s templates in mysite/templates.
By default, pages in your site will use the fullwidth.html template, the first one listed in the project’s
settings.py CMS_TEMPLATES tuple:
CMS_TEMPLATES = (
## Customize this
('fullwidth.html', 'Fullwidth'),
('sidebar_left.html', 'Sidebar Left'),
('sidebar_right.html', 'Sidebar Right')
)
Placeholders
Placeholders are an easy way to define sections in an HTML template that will be filled with content from the database
when the page is rendered. This content is edited using django CMS’s frontend editing mechanism, using Django
template tags.

fullwidth.html contains a single placeholder, {% placeholder "content" %}.

You’ll also see {% load cms_tags %} in that file - cms_tags is the required template tag library.
If you’re not already familiar with Django template tags, you can find out more in the Django documentation.
Add a couple of new placeholders to fullwidth.html, {% placeholder "feature" %} and {%
placeholder "splashbox" %} inside the {% block content %} section. For example:
{% block content %}
{% placeholder "feature" %}
{% placeholder "content" %}
{% placeholder "splashbox" %}
{% endblock content %}
If you switch to Structure mode, you’ll see the new placeholders available for use.
Static Placeholders
The content of the placeholders we’ve encountered so far is different for every page. Sometimes though you’ll want
to have a section on your website which should be the same on every single page, such as a footer block.
You could hard-code your footer into the template, but it would be nicer to be able to manage it through the CMS.
This is what static placeholders are for.
Static placeholders are an easy way to display the same content on multiple locations on your website. Static place-
holders act almost like normal placeholders, except for the fact that once a static placeholder is created and you added
content to it, it will be saved globally. Even when you remove the static placeholders from a template, you can reuse
them later.
So let’s add a footer to all our pages. Since we want our footer on every single page, we should add it to our base
template (mysite/templates/base.html). Place it near the end of the HTML <body> element:
<footer>
{% static_placeholder 'footer' %}
</footer>
{% render_block "js" %}
</body>

Save the template and return to your browser. Refresh any page in Structure mode, and you’ll see the new static
placeholder.
Note: To reduce clutter in the interface, the plugins in static placeholders are hidden by default. Click or tap on the
name of the static placeholder to reveal/hide them.
If you add some content to the new static placeholder in the usual way, you’ll see that it appears on your site’s other
pages too.
Rendering Menus
In order to render the CMS’s menu in your template you can use the show_menu tag.
Any template that uses show_menu must load the CMS’s menu_tags library first:
{% load menu_tags %}
The menu we use in mysite/templates/base.html is:
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">

{% show_menu 0 100 100 100 "menu.html" %}
</ul>
The options control the levels of the site hierarchy that are displayed in the menu tree - but you don’t need to worry
about exactly what they do at this stage.
Next we’ll look at Integrating applications.
Integrating applications
All the following sections of this tutorial are concerned with different ways of integrating other applications into
django CMS. The ease with which other applications can be built into django CMS sites is an important feature of the
system.
Integrating applications doesn’t merely mean installing them alongside django CMS, so that they peacefully co-exist.
It means using django CMS’s features to build them into a single coherent web project that speeds up the work of
managing the site, and makes possible richer and more automated publishing.
It’s key to the way that django CMS integration works that it doesn’t require you to modify your other applications
unless you want to. This is particularly important when you’re using third-party applications and don’t want to have to
maintain your own forked versions of them. (The only exception to this is if you decide to build django CMS features
directly into the applications themselves, for example when using placeholders in other applications.)
For this tutorial, we’re going to take a basic Django opinion poll application and integrate it into the CMS.
So we will:
• incorporate the Polls application into the project
• create a second, independent, Polls/CMS Integration application to manage the integration

This way we can integrate the Polls application without having to change anything in it.
Incorporate the polls application
Install polls
Install the application from its GitHub repository using pip:
pip install git+http://git@github.com/divio/django-polls.git#egg=polls
Let’s add this application to our project. Add 'polls' to the end of INSTALLED_APPS in your project’s settings.py
(see the note on The INSTALLED_APPS setting about ordering ).
Add the poll URL configuration to urlpatterns in the project’s urls.py:
urlpatterns += i18n_patterns(
url(r'âdmin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
url(r'^polls/', include('polls.urls')),
url(r'^', include('cms.urls')),
)
Note that it must be included before the line for the django CMS URLs. django CMS’s URL pattern needs to be last,
because it “swallows up” anything that hasn’t already been matched by a previous pattern.
Now run the application’s migrations:
python manage.py migrate polls
At this point you should be able to log in to the Django admin - http://localhost:8000/admin/ - and find
the Polls application.
Create a new Poll, for example:

• Question: Which browser do you prefer?
Choices:
– Safari
– Firefox
– Chrome
Now if you visit http://localhost:8000/en/polls/, you should be able to see the published poll and
submit a response.

Improve the templates for Polls
You’ll have noticed that in the Polls application we only have minimal templates, and no navigation or styling.
Our django CMS pages on the other hand have access to a number of default templates in the project, all of which
extend one called base.html. So, let’s improve this by overriding the polls application’s base template.
We’ll do this in the project directory.
In mysite/templates, add polls/base.html, containing:
{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block content %}
{% block polls_content %}
{% endblock %}
{% endblock %}
Refresh the /polls/ page again, which should now be properly integrated into the site.
Set up a new polls_cms_integration application
So far, however, the Polls application has been integrated into the project, but not into django CMS itself. The two
applications are completely independent. They cannot make use of each other’s data or functionality.
Let’s create the new Polls/CMS Integration application where we will bring them together.
Create the application
Create a new package at the project root called polls_cms_integration:
python manage.py startapp polls_cms_integration
Our workspace now looks like this:
tutorial-project/
media/
mysite/
polls_cms_integration/ # the newly-created application
__init__.py
admin.py
models.py
migrations.py
tests.py
views.py
static/
(continues on next page)

(continued from previous page)

manage.py
project.db
requirements.txt
Add it to INSTALLED_APPS
Next is to integrate the polls_cms_integration application into the project.

Add polls_cms_integration to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py - and now we’re ready to use it to
begin integrating Polls with django CMS. We’ll start by developing a Polls plugin.
Note: Adding templates to the project or to the application?

Earlier, we added new templates to the project. We could equally well have have added templates/polls/base.
html inside polls_cms_integration. After all, that’s where we’re going to be doing all the other integration
work.
However, we’d now have an application that makes assumptions about the name of the template it should extend (see
the first line of the base.html template we created) which might not be correct for a different project.
Also, we’d have to make sure that polls_cms_integration came before polls in INSTALLED_APPS, oth-
erwise the templates in polls_cms_integration would not in fact override the ones in polls. Putting them in
the project guarantees that they will override those in all applications.
Either way of doing it is reasonable, as long as you understand their implications.
Plugins
In this tutorial we’re going to take a basic Django opinion poll application and integrate it into the CMS.
Create a plugin model
In the models.py of polls_cms_integration add the following:
from django.db import models

from cms.models import CMSPlugin
from polls.models import Poll
class PollPluginModel(CMSPlugin):
poll = models.ForeignKey(Poll)
def __str__(self):
return self.poll.question
This creates a plugin model class; these all inherit from the cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin base class.
Note: django CMS plugins inherit from cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin (or a sub-class thereof) and
not models.Model.
Create and run migrations:

python manage.py makemigrations polls_cms_integration

python manage.py migrate polls_cms_integration
The Plugin Class
Now create a new file cms_plugins.py in the same folder your models.py is in. The plugin class is responsible
for providing django CMS with the necessary information to render your plugin.
For our poll plugin, we’re going to write the following plugin class:
from cms.plugin_base import CMSPluginBase
from cms.plugin_pool import plugin_pool
from polls_cms_integration.models import PollPluginModel
from django.utils.translation import ugettext as _
@plugin_pool.register_plugin # register the plugin

class PollPluginPublisher(CMSPluginBase):
model = PollPluginModel # model where plugin data are saved
module = _("Polls")
name = _("Poll Plugin") # name of the plugin in the interface
render_template = "polls_cms_integration/poll_plugin.html"
def render(self, context, instance, placeholder):

context.update({'instance': instance})
return context
Note: All plugin classes must inherit from cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase and must register themselves
with the plugin_pool.
A reasonable convention for plugin naming is:

• PollPluginModel: the model class
• PollPluginPublisher: the plugin class
You don’t need to follow this convention, but choose one that makes sense and stick to it.
The template
The render_template attribute in the plugin class is required, and tells the plugin which render_template
to use when rendering.
In this case the template needs to be at polls_cms_integration/templates/
polls_cms_integration/poll_plugin.html and should look something like this:
<h1>{{ instance.poll.question }}</h1>
<form action="{% url 'polls:vote' instance.poll.id %}" method="post">

{% csrf_token %}
<div class="form-group">
{% for choice in instance.poll.choice_set.all %}
<div class="radio">
<label>


<input type="radio" name="choice" value="{{ choice.id }}">
{{ choice.choice_text }}
</label>
</div>
{% endfor %}
</div>
<input type="submit" value="Vote" />
</form>
Test the plugin
Now you can restart the runserver (required because you added the new cms_plugins.py file, and visit http:
//localhost:8000/.
You can now drop the Poll Plugin into any placeholder on any page, just as you would any other plugin.
Next we’ll integrate the Polls application more fully into our django CMS project.
Apphooks
Right now, our Django Polls application is statically hooked into the project’s urls.py. This is all right, but we can
do more, by attaching applications to django CMS pages.
Create an apphook
We do this with an apphook, created using a CMSApp sub-class, which tells the CMS how to include that application.
Create the apphook class
Apphooks live in a file called cms_apps.py, so create one in your Polls/CMS Integration application, i.e. in
polls_cms_integration.

This is a very basic example of an apphook for a django CMS application:
from cms.app_base import CMSApp

from cms.apphook_pool import apphook_pool
@apphook_pool.register # register the application

class PollsApphook(CMSApp):
app_name = "polls"
name = "Polls Application"
def get_urls(self, page=None, language=None, **kwargs):

return ["polls.urls"]
In this PollsApphook class, we have done several key things:

• app_name attribute gives the system a unique way to refer to the apphook. You can see from Django Polls that
the application namespace polls is hard-coded into the application, so this attribute must also be polls.
• name is a human-readable name, and will be displayed to the admin user.
• get_urls() method is what actually hooks the application in, returning a list of URL configurations that will
be made active wherever the apphook is used - in this case, it will use the urls.py from polls.
Remove the old polls entry from the project’s urls.py
You must now remove the entry for the Polls application:
url(r'^polls/', include('polls.urls', namespace='polls'))
from your project’s urls.py.

Not only is it not only no longer even required there, because we reach the polls via the apphook instead, but if you
leave it there, it will conflict with the apphook’s URL handling. You’ll receive a warning in the logs:
URL namespace 'polls' isn't unique. You may not be able to reverse all URLs in this
˓→namespace.
Restart the runserver
Restart the runserver. This is necessary because we have created a new file containing Python code that won’t be
loaded until the server restarts. You only have to do this the first time the new file has been created.
Apply the apphook to a page
Now we need to create a new page, and attach the Polls application to it through this apphook.
Create and save a new page, then publish it.
Note: Your apphook won’t work until the page has been published.
In its Advanced settings (from the toolbar, select Page > Advanced settings. . . ) choose “Polls Application” from the
Application pop-up menu, and save once more.

Refresh the page, and you’ll find that the Polls application is now available directly from the new django CMS page.
Important: Don’t add child pages to a page with an apphook.

The apphook “swallows” all URLs below that of the page, handing them over to the attached application. If you have
any child pages of the apphooked page, django CMS will not be able to serve them reliably.
Extending the toolbar
django CMS allows you to control what appears in the toolbar. This allows you to integrate your application in the
frontend editing mode of django CMS and provide your users with a streamlined editing experience.
In this section of the tutorial, we will add a new Polls menu to the toolbar.
Add a basic PollToolbar class
We’ll add various controls to the toolbar, using a cms.toolbar_base.CMSToolbar sub-class.
Add a menu to the toolbar
Start by adding a new file, cms_toolbars.py, to your Polls/CMS Integration application, and create the
CMSToolbar class:
from cms.toolbar_base import CMSToolbar

from cms.toolbar_pool import toolbar_pool
class PollToolbar(CMSToolbar):
def populate(self):
self.toolbar.get_or_create_menu(
'polls_cms_integration-polls', # a unique key for this menu
'Polls', # the text that should appear in the menu
)
# register the toolbar

toolbar_pool.register(PollToolbar)
Note: Don’t forget to restart the runserver to have your new cms_toolbars.py file recognised.
You will now find, in every page of the site, a new item in the toolbar:

The populate() method is what gets called when the toolbar is built. In it, we’re using
get_or_create_menu() to add a Polls item to the toolbar.
Add nodes to the Polls menu
So far, the Polls menu is empty. We can extend populate() to add some items. get_or_create_menu returns
a menu that we can manipulate, so let’s change the populate() method to add an item that allows us to see the full
list of polls in the sideframe, with add_sideframe_item().
from cms.utils.urlutils import admin_reverse
[...]
def populate(self):
menu = self.toolbar.get_or_create_menu('polls_cms_integration-polls', 'Polls')
menu.add_sideframe_item(
name='Poll list', # name of the new menu item
url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_changelist'), # the URL it should open
˓→ with
)
After refreshing the page to load the changes, you can now see the list of polls directly from the menu.
Also useful would be an option to create new polls. We’ll use a modal window for this, invoked with
add_modal_item(). Add the new code to the end of the populate() method:
def populate(self):
[...]
menu.add_modal_item(
name='Add a new poll', # name of the new menu item
url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_add'), # the URL it should open with
)
Add buttons to the toolbar
As well as menus, you can add buttons to the toolbar in a very similar way. Rewrite the populate() method, noting
how closely the structure of this code matches that for adding menus.
def populate(self):
buttonlist = self.toolbar.add_button_list()
buttonlist.add_sideframe_button(
name='Poll list',
url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_changelist'),


)
buttonlist.add_modal_button
name='Add a new poll',
url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_add'),
)
Further refinements
The buttons and menu for Polls appear in the toolbar everywhere in the site. It would be useful to restrict this to pages
that are actually relevant.
The first thing to add is a test right at the start of the populate() method:
def populate(self):
if not self.is_current_app:
return
[...]
The is_current_app flag tells us if the function handling this view (e.g. the list of polls) belongs to the same
application as the one responsible for this toolbar menu.
Often, this can be detected automatically, but in this case, the view belongs to the polls application, whereas the
toolbar menu belongs to polls_cms_integration. So, we need to tell the PollToolbar class explicitly that
it’s actually associated with the polls application:
supported_apps = ['polls']
Now, the buttons/menu will only appear in relevant pages.
The complete cms_toolbars.py
For completeness, here is the full example:

supported_apps = ['polls']
def populate(self):
return
menu = self.toolbar.get_or_create_menu('polls_cms_integration-polls', 'Polls')


name='Poll list',
)
menu.add_modal_item(
name=('Add a new poll'),
)
buttonlist = self.toolbar.add_button_list()
buttonlist.add_sideframe_button(
name='Poll list',
)
buttonlist.add_modal_button
name='Add a new poll',
)
toolbar_pool.register(PollToolbar) # register the toolbar
This is just a basic example, and there’s a lot more to django CMS toolbar classes than this - see How to extend the
Toolbar for more.
Extending the navigation menu
You may have noticed that while our Polls application has been integrated into the CMS, with plugins, toolbar menu
items and so on, the site’s navigation menu is still only determined by django CMS Pages.
We can hook into the django CMS menu system to add our own nodes to that navigation menu.
Create the navigation menu
We create the menu using a CMSAttachMenu sub-class, and use the get_nodes() method to add the nodes.
For this we need a file called cms_menus.py in our application. Add cms_menus.py in
polls_cms_integration/:
from django.urls import reverse

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from cms.menu_bases import CMSAttachMenu

from menus.base import NavigationNode
from menus.menu_pool import menu_pool
class PollsMenu(CMSAttachMenu):
name = _("Polls Menu") # give the menu a name this is required.


def get_nodes(self, request):
"""
This method is used to build the menu tree.
"""
nodes = []
for poll in Poll.objects.all():
node = NavigationNode(
title=poll.question,
url=reverse('polls:detail', args=(poll.pk,)),
id=poll.pk, # unique id for this node within the menu
)
nodes.append(node)
return nodes
menu_pool.register_menu(PollsMenu)
What’s happening here:

• we define a PollsMenu class, and register it
• we give the class a name attribute (will be displayed in admin)
• in its get_nodes() method, we build and return a list of nodes, where:
• first we get all the Poll objects
• . . . and then create a NavigationNode object from each one
• . . . and return a list of these NavigationNodes
This menu class won’t actually do anything until attached to a page. In the Advanced settings of the page to which you
attached the apphook earlier, select “Polls Menu” from the list of Attached menu options, and save once more. (You
could add the menu to any page, but it makes most sense to add it to this page.)
You can force the menu to be added automatically to the page by the apphook if you consider this appropriate. See
Adding menus to apphooks for information on how to do that.
Note: The point here is to illustrate the basic principles. In this actual case, note that:
• If you’re going to use sub-pages, you’ll need to improve the menu styling to make it work a bit better.
• Since the Polls page lists all the Polls in it anyway, this isn’t really the most practical addition to the menu.
Content creation wizards
Content creation wizards allow you to make use of the toolbar’s Create button in your own applications. It opens up
a simple dialog box with the basic fields required to create a new item.
django CMS uses it for creating Pages, but you can add your own models to it.
In the polls_cms_integration application, add a forms.py file:

from django import forms
class PollWizardForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Poll
exclude = []
Then add a cms_wizards.py file, containing:
from cms.wizards.wizard_base import Wizard

from cms.wizards.wizard_pool import wizard_pool
from polls_cms_integration.forms import PollWizardForm
class PollWizard(Wizard):
pass
poll_wizard = PollWizard(
title="Poll",
weight=200, # determines the ordering of wizards in the Create dialog
form=PollWizardForm,
description="Create a new Poll",
)
wizard_pool.register(poll_wizard)
Refresh the Polls page, hit the Create button in the toolbar - and the wizard dialog will open, offering you a new
wizard for creating Polls.
Note: Once again, this particular example is for illustration only. In the case of a Poll, with its multiple Questions
associated with it via foreign keys, we really want to be able to edit those questions at the same time too.
That would require a much more sophisticated form and processing than is possible within the scope of this tutorial.
Integrating a third-party application
We’ve already written our own django CMS plugins and apps, but now we want to extend our CMS with a third-party
application, Aldryn News & Blog.
Basic installation
First, we need to install the app into our virtual environment from PyPI:
pip install aldryn-newsblog

Django settings
INSTALLED_APPS
Add the application and any of its requirements that are not there already to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py.
Some will be already present; it’s up to you to check them because you need to avoid duplication:
# you will probably need to add:

'aldryn_apphooks_config',
'aldryn_boilerplates',
'aldryn_categories',
'aldryn_common',
'aldryn_newsblog',
'aldryn_people',
'aldryn_reversion',
'djangocms_text_ckeditor',
'parler',
'sortedm2m',
'taggit',
# and you will probably find the following already listed:

'easy_thumbnails',
'filer',
'reversion',
THUMBNAIL_PROCESSORS
One of the dependencies is Django Filer. It provides a special feature that allows more sophisticated image
cropping. For this to work it needs its own thumbnail processor (filer.thumbnail_processors.
scale_and_crop_with_subject_location) to be listed in settings.py in place of
easy_thumbnails.processors.scale_and_crop:
THUMBNAIL_PROCESSORS = (
'easy_thumbnails.processors.colorspace',
'easy_thumbnails.processors.autocrop',
# 'easy_thumbnails.processors.scale_and_crop', # disable this one
'filer.thumbnail_processors.scale_and_crop_with_subject_location',
'easy_thumbnails.processors.filters',
)
ALDRYN_BOILERPLATE_NAME
Aldryn News & Blog uses aldryn-boilerplates to provide multiple sets of templates and static files for different CSS
frameworks. We’re using the Bootstrap 3 in this tutorial, so let’s choose bootstrap3 by adding the setting:
ALDRYN_BOILERPLATE_NAME='bootstrap3'
STATICFILES_FINDERS
Add the boilerplates static files finder to STATICFILES_FINDERS, immediately before django.contrib.
staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder:

STATICFILES_FINDERS = [
'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
'aldryn_boilerplates.staticfile_finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
]
If STATICFILES_FINDERS is not defined in your settings.py just copy and paste the code above.
TEMPLATES
Important: In Django 1.8, the TEMPLATE_LOADERS and TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS settings are

rolled into the TEMPLATES setting. We’re assuming you’re using Django 1.8 here.
TEMPLATES = [
{
# ...
'OPTIONS': {
'context_processors': [
# ...
'aldryn_boilerplates.context_processors.boilerplate',
],
'loaders': [
# ...
'aldryn_boilerplates.template_loaders.AppDirectoriesLoader',
],
},
},
]
Migrate the database
We’ve added a new application so we need to update our database:
python manage.py migrate
Start the server again.
Create a new apphooked page
The News & Blog application comes with a django CMS apphook, so add a new django CMS page (call it News), and
add the News & Blog application to it just as you did for Polls.
For this application we also need to create and select an Application configuration.
Give this application configuration some settings:
• Instance namespace: news (this is used for reversing URLs)
• Application title: News (the name that will represent the application configuration in the admin)
• Permalink type: choose a format you prefer for news article URLs

Save this application configuration, and make sure it’s selected in Application configurations.
Publish the new page, and you should find the News & Blog application at work there. (Until you actually create any
articles, it will simply inform you that there are No items available.)
Add new News & Blog articles
You can add new articles using the admin or the new News menu that now appears in the toolbar when you are on a
page belonging to News & Blog.
You can also insert a Latest articles plugin into another page - like all good django CMS applications, Aldryn News
& Blog comes with plugins.
If you want to install django CMS into an existing project, or prefer to configure django CMS by hand, rather than
using the automated installer, see How to install django CMS by hand and then follow the rest of the tutorials.
Either way, you’ll be able to find support and help from the numerous friendly members of the django CMS community,
either on our mailinglist or IRC channel #django-cms on the irc.freenode.net network.
If you don’t have an IRC client, you can join our IRC channel using the KiwiIRC web client, which works pretty well.
4.1.2 How-to guides
These guides presuppose some familiarity with django CMS. They cover some of the same territory as the Tutorials,
but in more detail.
Set-up
How to install django CMS by hand
The easiest way to install django CMS is by using the automated django CMS installer. This is the recommended way
to start with new projects, and it’s what we use in the tutorial section of this documentation.
If you prefer to do things manually, this how-to guide will take you through the process.
Note: You can also use this guide to help you install django CMS as part of an existing project. However, the guide
assumes that you are starting with a blank project, so you will need to adapt the steps below appropriately as required.
This document assumes you have some basic familiarity with Python and Django. After you’ve integrated django
CMS into your project, you should be able to follow the Tutorials for an introduction to developing with django CMS.
Install the django CMS package
Check the Python/Django requirements for this version of django CMS.

django CMS also has other requirements, which it lists as dependencies in its setup.py.
Important: We strongly recommend doing all of the following steps in a virtual environment. You ought to know
how to create, activate and dispose of virtual environments using virtualenv. If you don’t, you can use the steps below
to get started, but you are advised to take a few minutes to learn the basics of using virtualenv before proceeding
further.

virtualenv django-cms-site # create a virtualenv

source django-cms-site/bin/activate # activate it
In an activated virtualenv, run:
pip install --upgrade pip
to make sure pip is up-to-date, as earlier versions can be less reliable.

Then:
pip install django-cms
to install the latest stable version of django CMS.
Create a new project
Create a new project:
django-admin.py startproject myproject
If this is new to you, you ought to read the official Django tutorial, which covers starting a new project.
Your new project will look like this:
myproject
myproject
__init__.py
settings.py
urls.py
wsgi.py
manage.py
Minimally-required applications and settings
Open the new project’s settings.py file in your text editor.
INSTALLED_APPS
You will need to add the following to its list of INSTALLED_APPS:
'django.contrib.sites',
'cms',
'menus',
'treebeard',
• django CMS needs to use Django’s django.contrib.sites framework. You’ll need to set a SITE_ID in
the settings - SITE_ID = 1 will suffice.
• cms and menus are the core django CMS modules.
• django-treebeard is used to manage django CMS’s page and plugin tree structures.

django CMS installs django CMS admin style. This provides some styling that helps make django CMS administration
components easier to work with. Technically it’s an optional component and does not need to be enabled in your
project, but it’s strongly recommended.
In the INSTALLED_APPS, before django.contrib.admin, add:
'djangocms_admin_style',
Language settings
django CMS requires you to set the LANGUAGES setting. This should list all the languages you want your project to
serve, and must include the language in LANGUAGE_CODE.
For example:
LANGUAGES = [
('en', 'English'),
('de', 'German'),
]
(For simplicity’s sake, at this stage it is worth changing the default en-us in that you’ll find in the LANGUAGE_CODE
setting to en.)
Database
django CMS requires a relational database backend. Each django CMS installation should have its own database.
You can use SQLite, which is included in Python and doesn’t need to be installed separately or configured further. You
are unlikely to be using that for a project in production, but it’s ideal for development and exploration, especially as it
is configured by default in a new Django project’s DATABASES.
Note: For deployment, you’ll need to use a production-ready database with Django. We recommend using Post-
greSQL or MySQL.
Installing and maintaining database systems is far beyond the scope of this documentation, but is very well documented
on the systems’ respective websites.
Whichever database you use, it will also require the appropriate Python adaptor to be installed:
pip install psycopg2 # for Postgres

pip install mysqlclient # for MySQL
Refer to Django's DATABASES setting documentation for the appropriate configuration for your chosen
database backend.
Database tables
Now run migrations to create database tables for the new applications:

Admin user
Create an admin superuser:
python manage.py createsuperuser
Using cms check for configuration
Once you have completed the minimum required set-up described above, you can use django CMS’s built-in cms
check command to help you identify and install other components. Run:
python manage.py cms check
This will check your configuration, your applications and your database, and report on any problems.
Note: If key components are be missing, django CMS will be unable to run the cms check command and will
simply raise an error instead.
After each of the steps below run cms check to verify that you have resolved that item in its checklist.
Sekizai
Django Sekizai is required by the CMS for static files management. You need to have:
'sekizai'
listed in INSTALLED_APPS, and:
'sekizai.context_processors.sekizai'
in the TEMPLATES['OPTIONS']['context_processors']:
TEMPLATES = [
{
...
'OPTIONS': {
'context_processors': [
...
'sekizai.context_processors.sekizai',
],
},
},
]
Middleware
in your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES you’ll need django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware - it’s not

installed in Django projects by default.
Also add:

'cms.middleware.user.CurrentUserMiddleware',
'cms.middleware.page.CurrentPageMiddleware',
'cms.middleware.toolbar.ToolbarMiddleware',
'cms.middleware.language.LanguageCookieMiddleware',
to the list.
You can also add 'cms.middleware.utils.ApphookReloadMiddleware'. It’s not absolutely necessary,
but it’s useful. If included, should be at the start of the list.
Context processors
Add 'cms.context_processors.cms_settings' to TEMPLATES['OPTIONS']['context_processors'].

cms check should now be unable to identify any further issues with your project. Some additional configuration is
required however.
Further required configuration
URLs
In the project’s urls.py, add url(r'^', include('cms.urls')) to the urlpatterns list. It should
come after other patterns, so that specific URLs for other applications can be detected first.
You’ll also need to have an import for django.conf.urls.include. For example:
from django.conf.urls import url, include
urlpatterns = [
url(r'âdmin/', admin.site.urls),
]
The django CMS project will now run, as you’ll see if you launch it with python manage.py runserver.
You’ll be able to reach it at http://localhost:8000/, and the admin at http://localhost:8000/admin/. You won’t yet
actually be able to do anything very useful with it though.
Templates
django CMS requires at least one template for its pages. The first template in the CMS_TEMPLATES list will be the
project’s default template.
CMS_TEMPLATES = [
('home.html', 'Home page template'),
]
In the root of the project, create a templates directory, and in that, home.html, a minimal django CMS template:
{% load cms_tags sekizai_tags %}
<html>
<head>
<title>{% page_attribute "page_title" %}</title>
{% render_block "css" %}


</head>
<body>
{% cms_toolbar %}
</body>
</html>
This is worth explaining in a little detail:

• {% load cms_tags sekizai_tags %} loads the template tag libraries we use in the template.
• {% page_attribute "page_title" %} extracts the page’s page_title attribute.
• {% render_block "css" %} and {% render_block "js" %} are Sekizai template tags that load
blocks of HTML defined by Django applications. django CMS defines blocks for CSS and JavaScript, and re-
quires these two tags. We recommended placing {% render_block "css" %} just before the </head>
tag, and and {% render_block "js" %} tag just before the </body>.
• {% cms_toolbar %} renders the django CMS toolbar.
• {% placeholder "content" %} defines a placeholder, where plugins can be inserted. A template
needs at least one {% placeholder %} template tag to be useful for django CMS. The name of the place-
holder is simply a descriptive one, for your reference.
Django needs to be know where to look for its templates, so add templates to the TEMPLATES['DIRS'] list:
TEMPLATES = [
{
...
'DIRS': ['templates'],
...
},
]
Note: The way we have set up the template here is just for illustration. In a real project, we’d recommend creating a
base.html template, shared by all the applications in the project, that your django CMS templates can extend.
See Django’s template language documentation for more on how template inheritance works.
Media and static file handling
A django CMS site will need to handle:

• static files, that are a core part of an application or project, such as its necessary images, CSS or JavaScript
• media files, that are uploaded by the site’s users or applications.
STATIC_URL is defined (as "/static/") in a new project’s settings by default. STATIC_ROOT, the location that
static files will be copied to and served from, is not required for development - only for production.
For now, using the runserver and with DEBUG = True in your settings, you don’t need to worry about either of
these.
However, MEDIA_URL (where media files will be served) and MEDIA_ROOT (where they will be stored) need to be
added to your settings:

MEDIA_URL = "/media/"
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "media")
For deployment, you need to configure suitable media file serving. For development purposes only, the following
will work in your urls.py:
from django.conf import settings

from django.conf.urls.static import static
urlpatterns = [
...
] + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
(See the Django documentation for guidance on serving media files in production.)
Adding content-handling functionality
You now have the basics set up for a django CMS site, which is able to manage and serve up pages. However the
project so far has no plugins installed, which means it has no way of handling content in those pages. All content in
django CMS is managed via plugins. So, we now need to install some additional addon applications to provide plugins
and other functionality.
You don’t actually need to install any of these. django CMS doesn’t commit you to any particular applications for
content handling. The ones listed here however provide key functionality and are strongly recommended.
Django Filer
Django Filer provides file and image management. Many other applications also rely on Django Filer - it’s very
unusual to have a django CMS site that does not run Django Filer. The configuration in this section will get you
started, but you should refer to the Django Filer documentation for more comprehensive configuration information.
To install:
pip install django-filer
A number of applications will be installed as dependencies. Easy Thumbnails is required to create new versions of
images in different sizes; Django MPTT manages the tree structure of the folders in Django Filer.
Pillow, the Python imaging library, will be installed. Pillow needs some system-level libraries - the Pillow documen-
tation describes in detail what is required to get this running on various operating systems.
Add:
'filer',
'easy_thumbnails',
'mptt',
to INSTALLED_APPS.
You also need to add:
THUMBNAIL_HIGH_RESOLUTION = True
THUMBNAIL_PROCESSORS = (
'easy_thumbnails.processors.colorspace',


'easy_thumbnails.processors.autocrop',
'filer.thumbnail_processors.scale_and_crop_with_subject_location',
'easy_thumbnails.processors.filters'
)
New database tables will need to be created for Django Filer and Easy Thumbnails, so run migrations:
python manage.py migrate filer

python manage.py migrate easy_thumbnails
(or simply, python manage.py migrate).
Django CMS CKEditor
Django CMS CKEditor is the default text editor for django CMS.
Install: pip install djangocms-text-ckeditor.
Add djangocms_text_ckeditor to your INSTALLED_APPS.
Run migrations:
python manage.py migrate djangocms_text_ckeditor
Miscellaneous plugins
There are plugins for django CMS that cover a vast range of functionality. To get started, it’s useful to be able to rely
on a set of well-maintained plugins that cover some general content management needs.
• djangocms-link
• djangocms-file
• djangocms-picture
• djangocms-video
• djangocms-googlemap
• djangocms-snippet
• djangocms-style
• djangocms-column
To install:
pip install djangocms-link djangocms-file djangocms-picture djangocms-video djangocms-

˓→googlemap djangocms-snippet djangocms-style djangocms-column
and add:
'djangocms_link',
'djangocms_file',
'djangocms_picture',
'djangocms_video',
'djangocms_googlemap',


'djangocms_snippet',
'djangocms_style',
'djangocms_column',
to INSTALLED_APPS.
Then run migrations:
python manage.py migrate.
These and other plugins are described in more detail in Some commonly-used plugins. More are listed plugins available
on the django CMS Marketplace.
Launch the project
Start up the runserver:
python manage.py runserver
and access the new site, which you should now be able to reach at http://localhost:8000. Login if you
haven’t done so already.
Next steps
If this is your first django CMS project, read through the Tutorial for a walk-through of some basics.
The tutorials for developers will help you understand how to approach django CMS as a developer. Note that the
tutorials assume you have installed the CMS using the django CMS Installer, but with a little adaptation you’ll be able
to use it as a basis.
To deploy your django CMS project on a production web server, please refer to the Django deployment documentation.

Using core functionality
How to use placeholders outside the CMS
Placeholders are special model fields that django CMS uses to render user-editable content (plugins) in templates. That
is, it’s the place where a user can add text, video or any other plugin to a webpage, using the same frontend editing as
the CMS pages.
Placeholders can be viewed as containers for CMSPlugin instances, and can be used outside the CMS in custom
applications using the PlaceholderField.
By defining one (or several) PlaceholderField on a custom model you can take advantage of the full power of
CMSPlugin.
Get started
You need to define a PlaceholderField on the model you would like to use:

from cms.models.fields import PlaceholderField
class MyModel(models.Model):
# your fields
my_placeholder = PlaceholderField('placeholder_name')
# your methods
The PlaceholderField has one required parameter, a string slotname.

The slotname is used in templates, to determine where the placeholder’s plugins should appear in the page, and
in the placeholder configuration CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF, which determines which plugins may be inserted into
this placeholder.
You can also use a callable for the slotname, as in:

from cms.models.fields import PlaceholderField
def my_placeholder_slotname(instance):
return 'placeholder_name'
# your fields
my_placeholder = PlaceholderField(my_placeholder_slotname)
# your methods
Warning: For security reasons the related_name for a PlaceholderField may not be suppressed using '+';
this allows the cms to check permissions properly. Attempting to do so will raise a ValueError.
Note: If you add a PlaceholderField to an existing model, you’ll be able to see the placeholder in the frontend editor
only after saving the relevant instance.

Admin Integration
Changed in version 3.0.

Your model with PlaceholderFields can still be edited in the admin. However, any PlaceholderFields in it will
only be available for editing from the frontend. PlaceholderFields must not be present in any fieldsets,
fields, form or other ModelAdmin field’s definition attribute.
To provide admin support for a model with a PlaceholderField in your application’s admin, you need to use the
mixin PlaceholderAdminMixin along with the ModelAdmin. Note that the PlaceholderAdminMixin
must precede the ModelAdmin in the class definition:
from django.contrib import admin

from cms.admin.placeholderadmin import PlaceholderAdminMixin
from myapp.models import MyModel
class MyModelAdmin(PlaceholderAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):

pass
admin.site.register(MyModel, MyModelAdmin)
I18N Placeholders
Out of the box PlaceholderAdminMixin supports multiple languages and will display language
tabs. If you extend your model admin class derived from PlaceholderAdminMixin and overwrite
change_form_template have a look at admin/placeholders/placeholder/change_form.html
to see how to display the language tabs.
If you need other fields translated as well, django CMS has support for django-hvad. If you use a
TranslatableModel model be sure to not include the placeholder fields amongst the translated fields:
class MultilingualExample1(TranslatableModel):
translations = TranslatedFields(
title=models.CharField('title', max_length=255),
description=models.CharField('description', max_length=255),
)
placeholder_1 = PlaceholderField('placeholder_1')
def __unicode__(self):
return self.title
Be sure to combine both hvad’s TranslatableAdmin and PlaceholderAdminMixin when registering your
model with the admin site:
from cms.admin.placeholderadmin import PlaceholderAdminMixin

from hvad.admin import TranslatableAdmin
from myapp.models import MultilingualExample1
class MultilingualModelAdmin(TranslatableAdmin, PlaceholderAdminMixin, admin.

˓→ModelAdmin):
pass
admin.site.register(MultilingualExample1, MultilingualModelAdmin)

Templates
To render the placeholder in a template you use the render_placeholder tag from the cms_tags template tag
library:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% render_placeholder mymodel_instance.my_placeholder "640" %}
The render_placeholder tag takes the following parameters:

• PlaceholderField instance
• width parameter for context sensitive plugins (optional)
• language keyword plus language-code string to render content in the specified language (optional)
The view in which you render your placeholder field must return the request object in the context. This is typically
achieved in Django applications by using RequestContext:
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render
def my_model_detail(request, id):

object = get_object_or_404(MyModel, id=id)
return render(request, 'my_model_detail.html', {
'object': object,
})
If you want to render plugins from a specific language, you can use the tag like this:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% render_placeholder mymodel_instance.my_placeholder language 'en' %}
Adding content to a placeholder
Changed in version 3.0.

Placeholders can be edited from the frontend by visiting the page displaying your model (where you put the
render_placeholder tag), then appending ?edit to the page’s URL.
This will make the frontend editor top banner appear (and if necessary will require you to login).
Once in frontend editing mode, the interface for your application’s PlaceholderFields will work in much the
same way as it does for CMS Pages, with a switch for Structure and Content modes and so on.
There is no automatic draft/live functionality for general Django models, so content is updated instantly whenever you
add/edit them.
Options
If you need to change ?edit to a custom string (say, ?admin_on) you may set CMS_TOOLBAR_URL__EDIT_ON
variable in your settings.py to "admin_on".
You may also change other URLs with similar settings:
• ?edit_off (CMS_TOOLBAR_URL__EDIT_OFF)

• ?build (CMS_TOOLBAR_URL__BUILD)
• ?toolbar_off (CMS_TOOLBAR_URL__DISABLE)
When changing these settings, please be careful because you might inadvertently replace reserved strings in system
(such as ?page). We recommended you use safely unique strings for this option (such as secret_admin or
company_name).
Permissions
To be able to edit a placeholder user must be a staff member and needs either edit permissions on the model that
contains the PlaceholderField, or permissions for that specific instance of that model. Required permissions for
edit actions are:
• to add: require add or change permission on related Model or instance.
• to change: require add or change permission on related Model or instance.
• to delete: require add or change or delete permission on related Model or instance.
With this logic, an user who can change a Model’s instance but can not add a new Model’s instance will be able to
add some placeholders or plugins to existing Model’s instances.
Model permissions are usually added through the default Django auth application and its admin interface. Object-
level permission can be handled by writing a custom authentication backend as described in django docs
For example, if there is a UserProfile model that contains a PlaceholderField then the custom backend
can refer to a has_perm method (on the model) that grants all rights to current user only based on the user’s
UserProfile object:
def has_perm(self, user_obj, perm, obj=None):

if not user_obj.is_staff:
return False
if isinstance(obj, UserProfile):
if user_obj.get_profile()==obj:
return True
return False
How to serve multiple languages
If you used the django CMS installer to start your project, you’ll find that it’s already set up for serving multilingual
content. Our How to install django CMS by hand guide also does the same.
This guide specifically describes the steps required to enable multilingual support, in case you need to it manually.
Multilingual URLs
If you use more than one language, django CMS urls, including the admin URLS, need to be referenced via
i18n_patterns(). For more information about this see the official Django documentation on the subject.
Here’s a full example of urls.py:

from django.conf.urls import include, url
from django.conf.urls.i18n import i18n_patterns, JavascriptCatalog


from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^jsi18n/(?P<packages>\S+?)/$', JavascriptCatalog.as_view()),
]
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()
# note the django CMS URLs included via i18n_patterns

urlpatterns += i18n_patterns('',
)
Monolingual URLs
Of course, if you want only monolingual URLs, without a language code, simply don’t use i18n_patterns():
urlpatterns += [
]
Store the user’s language preference
The user’s preferred language is maintained through a browsing session. So that django CMS remembers the user’s
preference in subsequent sessions, it must be stored in a cookie. To enable this, cms.middleware.language.
LanguageCookieMiddleware must be added to the project’s MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting.
See How django CMS determines which language to serve for more information about how this works.
Working in templates
Display a language chooser in the page
The language_chooser template tag will display a language chooser for the current page. You can modify the
template in menu/language_chooser.html or provide your own template if necessary.
Example:
{% language_chooser "myapp/language_chooser.html" %}
If you are in an apphook and have a detail view of an object you can set an object to the toolbar in your view. The cms
will call get_absolute_url in the corresponding language for the language chooser:
Example:

class AnswerView(DetailView):
def get(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.object = self.get_object()
if hasattr(self.request, 'toolbar'):
self.request.toolbar.set_object(self.object)
response = super(AnswerView, self).get(*args, **kwargs)
return response
With this you can more easily control what url will be returned on the language chooser.
Note: If you have a multilingual objects be sure that you return the right url if you don’t have a translation for this
language in get_absolute_url
Get the URL of the current page for a different language
The page_language_url returns the URL of the current page in another language.
Example:
{% page_language_url "de" %}
Configuring language-handling behaviour
CMS_LANGUAGES describes the all options available for determining how django CMS serves content across multiple
languages.
How to work with templates
Application can reuse cms templates by mixing cms template tags and normal django templating language.
static_placeholder
Plain placeholder cannot be used in templates used by external applications, use static_placeholder in-
stead.
CMS_TEMPLATE
New in version 3.0.

CMS_TEMPLATE is a context variable available in the context; it contains the template path for CMS pages and
application using apphooks, and the default template (i.e.: the first template in CMS_TEMPLATES) for non-CMS
managed URLs.
This is mostly useful to use it in the extends template tag in the application templates to get the current page
template.
Example: cms template

{% load cms_tags %}
<html>
<body>
{% cms_toolbar %}
{% block main %}
{% placeholder "main" %}
{% endblock main %}
</body>
</html>
Example: application template
{% extends CMS_TEMPLATE %}
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block main %}
{% for item in object_list %}
{{ item }}
{% endfor %}
{% static_placeholder "sidebar" %}
{% endblock main %}
CMS_TEMPLATE memorises the path of the cms template so the application template can dynamically import it.
render_model
New in version 3.0.

render_model allows to edit the django models from the frontend by reusing the django CMS frontend editor.
How to manage caching
Set-up
To setup caching configure a caching backend in django.

Details for caching can be found here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/cache/
In your middleware settings be sure to add django.middleware.cache.UpdateCacheMiddleware at the
first and django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware at the last position:
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES=[
'django.middleware.cache.UpdateCacheMiddleware',
...
'cms.middleware.language.LanguageCookieMiddleware',
'cms.middleware.user.CurrentUserMiddleware',
'cms.middleware.page.CurrentPageMiddleware',
'cms.middleware.toolbar.ToolbarMiddleware',
'django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware',
],
Plugins
New in version 3.0.

Normally all plugins will be cached. If you have a plugin that is dynamic based on the current user or other dynamic
properties of the request set the cache=False attribute on the plugin class:
class MyPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
name = _("MyPlugin")
cache = False
Warning: If you disable a plugin cache be sure to restart the server and clear the cache afterwards.
Content Cache Duration
Default: 60
This can be changed in CMS_CACHE_DURATIONS
Settings
Caching is set default to true. Have a look at the following settings to enable/disable various caching behaviours:
• CMS_PAGE_CACHE
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CACHE
• CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE
How to enable frontend editing for Page and Django models
New in version 3.0.

As well as PlaceholderFields, ‘ordinary’ Django model fields (both on CMS Pages and your own Django
models) can also be edited through django CMS’s frontend editing interface. This is very convenient for the user
because it saves having to switch between frontend and admin views.
Using this interface, model instance values that can be edited show the “Double-click to edit” hint on hover. Double-
clicking opens a pop-up window containing the change form for that model.
Note: This interface is not currently available for touch-screen users, but will be improved in future releases.
Warning: This feature is only partially compatible with django-hvad: using render_model with hvad-
translated fields (say {% render_model object 'translated_field' %} returns an error if the
hvad-enabled object does not exists in the current language. As a workaround render_model_icon can be
used instead.
Template tags
This feature relies on five template tags sharing common code. All require that you {% load cms_tags %} in
your template:
• render_model (for editing a specific field)

• render_model_block (for editing any of the fields in a defined block)

• render_model_icon (for editing a field represented by another value, such as an image)
• render_model_add (for adding an instance of the specified model)
• render_model_add_block (for adding an instance of the specified model)
Look at the tag-specific page for more detailed reference and discussion of limitations and caveats.
Page titles edit
For CMS pages you can edit the titles from the frontend; according to the attribute specified a default field, which can
also be overridden, will be editable.
Main title:
{% render_model request.current_page "title" %}
Page title:
{% render_model request.current_page "page_title" %}
Menu title:
{% render_model request.current_page "menu_title" %}
All three titles:
{% render_model request.current_page "titles" %}
You can always customise the editable fields by providing the edit_field parameter:
{% render_model request.current_page "title" "page_title,menu_title" %}
Page menu edit
By using the special keyword changelist as edit field the frontend editing will show the page tree; a common
pattern for this is to enable changes in the menu by wrapping the menu template tags:
{% render_model_block request.current_page "changelist" %}

<h3>Menu</h3>
<ul>
{% show_menu 1 100 0 1 "sidebar_submenu_root.html" %}
</ul>
{% endrender_model_block %}
Will render to:
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-start cms-plugin-cms-page-changelist-1"></

˓→tempate>
<h3>Menu</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="/another">another</a></li>


[...]
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-end cms-plugin-cms-page-changelist-1"></
˓→tempate>
Editing ‘ordinary’ Django models
As noted above, your own Django models can also present their fields for editing in the frontend. This is achieved by
using the FrontendEditableAdminMixin base class.
Note that this is only required for fields other than PlaceholderFields. PlaceholderFields are automat-
ically made available for frontend editing.
Configure the model’s admin class
Configure your admin class by adding the FrontendEditableAdminMixin mixin to it (see Django admin
documentation for general Django admin information):
from cms.admin.placeholderadmin import FrontendEditableAdminMixin

class MyModelAdmin(FrontendEditableAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):

...
The ordering is important: as usual, mixins must come first.

Then set up the templates where you want to expose the model for editing, adding a render_model template tag:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" %}</h1>
See template tag reference for arguments documentation.
Selected fields edit
Frontend editing is also possible for a set of fields.
Set up the admin
You need to add to your model admin a tuple of fields editable from the frontend admin:
from cms.admin.placeholderadmin import FrontendEditableAdminMixin

class MyModelAdmin(FrontendEditableAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):

frontend_editable_fields = ("foo", "bar")
...

Set up the template
Then add comma separated list of fields (or just the name of one field) to the template tag:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" "some_field,other_field" %}</h1>
Special attributes
The attribute argument of the template tag is not required to be a model field, property or method can also be
used as target; in case of a method, it will be called with request as argument.
Custom views
You can link any field to a custom view (not necessarily an admin view) to handle model-specific editing workflow.
The custom view can be passed either as a named url (view_url parameter) or as name of a method (or property) on
the instance being edited (view_method parameter). In case you provide view_method it will be called whenever
the template tag is evaluated with request as parameter.
The custom view does not need to obey any specific interface; it will get edit_fields value as a GET parameter.
See template tag reference for arguments documentation.
Example view_url:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" "some_field,other_field" ""
˓→"admin:exampleapp_example1_some_view" %}</h1>
Example view_method:
char = models.CharField(max_length=10)
def some_method(self, request):

return "/some/url"
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" "some_field,other_field" "" "" "some_
˓→method" %}</h1>
Model changelist
By using the special keyword changelist as edit field the frontend editing will show the model changelist:

{% render_model instance "name" "changelist" %}
Will render to:
<div class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-changelist-1">

My Model Instance Name
</div>
Filters
If you need to apply filters to the output value of the template tag, add quoted sequence of filters as in Django filter
template tag:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "attribute" "" "" "truncatechars:9" %}</h1>
Context variable
The template tag output can be saved in a context variable for later use, using the standard as syntax:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
{% render_model instance "attribute" as variable %}
<h1>{{ variable }}</h1>
How to create sitemaps
Sitemap
Sitemaps are XML files used by Google to index your website by using their Webmaster Tools and telling them the
location of your sitemap.
The cms.sitemaps.CMSSitemap will create a sitemap with all the published pages of your CMS.
Configuration
• add django.contrib.sitemaps to your project’s INSTALLED_APPS setting

• add from cms.sitemaps import CMSSitemap to the top of your main urls.py
• add from django.contrib.sitemaps.views import sitemap to urls.py`
• add url(r'^sitemap\.xml$', sitemap, {'sitemaps': {'cmspages':
CMSSitemap}}), to your urlpatterns

django.contrib.sitemaps
More information about django.contrib.sitemaps can be found in the official Django documentation.
New in version 3.0.
How to manage Page Types
Page Types make it easier for content editors to create pages from predefined types.
The examples contain content such as plugins that will be copied over to the newly-created page, leaving the type
untouched.
Creating Page Types
First you need to create a new page in the usual way; this will become the template for your new page type.
Use this page as your template to add example content and plugins until you reach a satisfied result.
Once ready, choose Save as Page Type. . . from the Page menu and give it an appropriate name. Don’t worry about
making it perfect, you can continue to change its content and settings.
This will create a new page type, and makes it available from Add Page command and the Create wizard dialog.
If you don’t want or need the original page from which you create the new page type, you can simply delete it.
Managing Page Types
When you save a page as a page type, it is placed in the page list under Page Types node.
This node behaves differently from regular pages:
• They are not publicly accessible.

• All pages listed in Page Types will be rendered in the Page Types drop-down menu.
There’s also a quick way to create a new page type: simply drag an existing page to the Page Types node, whereupon
it will become a new page type.
Selecting a Page Type
You can now select a page type when creating a new page. You’ll find a drop-down menu named Page Type from
which you can select the type for your new page.
Creating new functionality
How to create Plugins
CMS Plugins are reusable content publishers that can be inserted into django CMS pages (or indeed into any con-
tent that uses django CMS placeholders). They enable the publishing of information automatically, without further
intervention.
This means that your published web content, whatever it is, is kept up-to-date at all times.
It’s like magic, but quicker.
Unless you’re lucky enough to discover that your needs can be met by the built-in plugins, or by the many available
third-party plugins, you’ll have to write your own custom CMS Plugin. Don’t worry though - writing a CMS Plugin
is very straightforward.
Why would you need to write a plugin?
A plugin is the most convenient way to integrate content from another Django app into a django CMS page.
For example, suppose you’re developing a site for a record company in django CMS. You might like to have a “Latest
releases” box on your site’s home page.

Of course, you could every so often edit that page and update the information. However, a sensible record company
will manage its catalogue in Django too, which means Django already knows what this week’s new releases are.
This is an excellent opportunity to make use of that information to make your life easier - all you need to do is create
a django CMS plugin that you can insert into your home page, and leave it to do the work of publishing information
about the latest releases for you.
Plugins are reusable. Perhaps your record company is producing a series of reissues of seminal Swiss punk records;
on your site’s page about the series, you could insert the same plugin, configured a little differently, that will publish
information about recent new releases in that series.
Overview
A django CMS plugin is fundamentally composed of three things.

• a plugin editor, to configure a plugin each time it is deployed
• a plugin publisher, to do the automated work of deciding what to publish
• a plugin template, to render the information into a web page
These correspond to the familiar Model-View-Template scheme:
• the plugin model to store its configuration
• the plugin view that works out what needs to be displayed
• the plugin template to render the information
And so to build your plugin, you’ll make it from:
• a sub-class of cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin to store the configuration for your plugin in-
stances
• a sub-class of cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase that defines the operating logic of your plugin
• a template that renders your plugin
A note about cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase is actually a sub-class of django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.

Because CMSPluginBase sub-classes ModelAdmin several important ModelAdmin options are also available to
CMS plugin developers. These options are often used:
• exclude
• fields
• fieldsets
• form
• formfield_overrides
• inlines
• radio_fields
• raw_id_fields
• readonly_fields

Please note, however, that not all ModelAdmin options are effective in a CMS plugin. In particular, any options that
are used exclusively by the ModelAdmin’s changelist will have no effect. These and other notable options that
are ignored by the CMS are:
• actions
• actions_on_top
• actions_on_bottom
• actions_selection_counter
• date_hierarchy
• list_display
• list_display_links
• list_editable
• list_filter
• list_max_show_all
• list_per_page
• ordering
• paginator
• preserve_fields
• save_as
• save_on_top
• search_fields
• show_full_result_count
• view_on_site
An aside on models and configuration
The plugin model, the sub-class of cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin, is actually optional.

You could have a plugin that doesn’t need to be configured, because it only ever does one thing.
For example, you could have a plugin that only publishes information about the top-selling record of the past seven
days. Obviously, this wouldn’t be very flexible - you wouldn’t be able to use the same plugin for the best-selling
release of the last month instead.
Usually, you find that it is useful to be able to configure your plugin, and this will require a model.
The simplest plugin
You may use python manage.py startapp to set up the basic layout for you plugin app (remember to add
your plugin to INSTALLED_APPS). Alternatively, just add a file called cms_plugins.py to an existing Django
application.
In cms_plugins.py, you place your plugins. For our example, include the following code:


from cms.models.pluginmodel import CMSPlugin
@plugin_pool.register_plugin
class HelloPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
model = CMSPlugin
render_template = "hello_plugin.html"
cache = False
Now we’re almost done. All that’s left is to add the template. Add the following into the root template directory in a
file called hello_plugin.html:
<h1>Hello {% if request.user.is_authenticated %}{{ request.user.first_name }} {{

˓→request.user.last_name}}{% else %}Guest{% endif %}</h1>
This plugin will now greet the users on your website either by their name if they’re logged in, or as Guest if they’re
not.
Now let’s take a closer look at what we did there. The cms_plugins.py files are where you should define your
sub-classes of cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase, these classes define the different plugins.
There are two required attributes on those classes:
• model: The model you wish to use for storing information about this plugin. If you do not require any special
information, for example configuration, to be stored for your plugins, you can simply use cms.models.
pluginmodel.CMSPlugin (we’ll look at that model more closely in a bit). In a normal admin class, you
don’t need to supply this information because admin.site.register(Model, Admin) takes care of it,
but a plugin is not registered in that way.
• name: The name of your plugin as displayed in the admin. It is generally good practice to mark this string
as translatable using django.utils.translation.ugettext_lazy(), however this is optional. By
default the name is a nicer version of the class name.
And one of the following must be defined if render_plugin attribute is True (the default):
• render_template: The template to render this plugin with.
or
• get_render_template: A method that returns a template path to render the plugin with.
In addition to those attributes, you can also override the render() method which determines the template context
variables that are used to render your plugin. By default, this method only adds instance and placeholder
objects to your context, but plugins can override this to include any context that is required.
A number of other methods are available for overriding on your CMSPluginBase sub-classes. See: CMSPluginBase
for further details.
Troubleshooting
Since plugin modules are found and loaded by django’s importlib, you might experience errors because the path
environment is different at runtime. If your cms_plugins isn’t loaded or accessible, try the following:
$ python manage.py shell

>>> from importlib import import_module
>>> m = import_module("myapp.cms_plugins")
>>> m.some_test_function()

Storing configuration
In many cases, you want to store configuration for your plugin instances. For example, if you have a plugin that shows
the latest blog posts, you might want to be able to choose the amount of entries shown. Another example would be a
gallery plugin where you want to choose the pictures to show for the plugin.
To do so, you create a Django model by sub-classing cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin in the models.
py of an installed application.
Let’s improve our HelloPlugin from above by making its fallback name for non-authenticated users configurable.
In our models.py we add the following:
from cms.models.pluginmodel import CMSPlugin
class Hello(CMSPlugin):
guest_name = models.CharField(max_length=50, default='Guest')
If you followed the Django tutorial, this shouldn’t look too new to you. The only difference to normal models is that
you sub-class cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin rather than django.db.models.Model.
Now we need to change our plugin definition to use this model, so our new cms_plugins.py looks like this:

from .models import Hello
class HelloPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
model = Hello
name = _("Hello Plugin")
render_template = "hello_plugin.html"
cache = False

context = super(HelloPlugin, self).render(context, instance, placeholder)
return context
We changed the model attribute to point to our newly created Hello model and pass the model instance to the
context.
As a last step, we have to update our template to make use of this new configuration:
<h1>Hello {% if request.user.is_authenticated %}
{{ request.user.first_name }} {{ request.user.last_name}}
{% else %}
{{ instance.guest_name }}
{% endif %}</h1>
The only thing we changed there is that we use the template variable {{ instance.guest_name }} instead of
the hard-coded Guest string in the else clause.

Warning: You cannot name your model fields the same as any installed plugins lowercased model
name, due to the implicit one-to-one relation Django uses for sub-classed models. If you use all core plu-
gins, this includes: file, googlemap, link, picture, snippetptr, teaser, twittersearch,
twitterrecententries and video.
Additionally, it is recommended that you avoid using page as a model field, as it is declared as a property of
cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin, and your plugin will not work as intended in the administration
without further work.
Warning: If you are using Python 2.x and overriding the __unicode__ method of the model file, make sure
to return its results as UTF8-string. Otherwise saving an instance of your plugin might fail with the frontend
editor showing an <Empty> plugin instance. To return in Unicode use a return statement like return u'{0}'.
format(self.guest_name).
Handling Relations
Every time the page with your custom plugin is published the plugin is copied. So if your custom plugin has foreign
key (to it, or from it) or many-to-many relations you are responsible for copying those related objects, if required,
whenever the CMS copies the plugin - it won’t do it for you automatically.
Every plugin model inherits the empty cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin.copy_relations()
method from the base class, and it’s called when your plugin is copied. So, it’s there for you to adapt to your purposes
as required.
Typically, you will want it to copy related objects. To do this you should create a method called copy_relations
on your plugin model, that receives the old instance of the plugin as an argument.
You may however decide that the related objects shouldn’t be copied - you may want to leave them alone, for example.
Or, you might even want to choose some altogether different relations for it, or to create new ones when it’s copied. . .
it depends on your plugin and the way you want it to work.
If you do want to copy related objects, you’ll need to do this in two slightly different ways, depending on whether your
plugin has relations to or from other objects that need to be copied too:
For foreign key relations from other objects
Your plugin may have items with foreign keys to it, which will typically be the case if you set it up so that they are
inlines in its admin. So you might have two models, one for the plugin and one for those items:
class ArticlePluginModel(CMSPlugin):
title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
class AssociatedItem(models.Model):
plugin = models.ForeignKey(
ArticlePluginModel,
related_name="associated_item"
)
You’ll then need the copy_relations() method on your plugin model to loop over the associated items and copy
them, giving the copies foreign keys to the new plugin:

def copy_relations(self, oldinstance):

# Before copying related objects from the old instance, the ones
# on the current one need to be deleted. Otherwise, duplicates may
# appear on the public version of the page
self.associated_item.all().delete()
for associated_item in oldinstance.associated_item.all():

# instance.pk = None; instance.pk.save() is the slightly odd but
# standard Django way of copying a saved model instance
associated_item.pk = None
associated_item.plugin = self
associated_item.save()
For many-to-many or foreign key relations to other objects
Let’s assume these are the relevant bits of your plugin:
sections = models.ManyToManyField(Section)
Now when the plugin gets copied, you want to make sure the sections stay, so it becomes:
sections = models.ManyToManyField(Section)
def copy_relations(self, oldinstance):

self.sections = oldinstance.sections.all()
If your plugins have relational fields of both kinds, you may of course need to use both the copying techniques
described above.
Relations between plugins
It is much harder to manage the copying of relations when they are from one plugin to another.
See the GitHub issue copy_relations() does not work for relations between cmsplugins #4143 for more details.
Advanced
Inline Admin
If you want to have the foreign key relation as a inline admin, you can create an admin.StackedInline class and
put it in the Plugin to “inlines”. Then you can use the inline admin form for your foreign key references:
class ItemInlineAdmin(admin.StackedInline):
model = AssociatedItem

class ArticlePlugin(CMSPluginBase):
model = ArticlePluginModel
name = _("Article Plugin")
render_template = "article/index.html"
inlines = (ItemInlineAdmin,)

context = super(ArticlePlugin, self).render(context, instance, placeholder)
items = instance.associated_item.all()
context.update({
'items': items,
})
return context
Plugin form
Since cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase extends django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin, you can

customise the form for your plugins just as you would customise your admin interfaces.
The template that the plugin editing mechanism uses is cms/templates/admin/cms/page/plugin/
change_form.html. You might need to change this.
If you want to customise this the best way to do it is:
• create a template of your own that extends cms/templates/admin/cms/page/plugin/
change_form.html to provide the functionality you require;
• provide your cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase sub-class with a change_form_template at-
tribute pointing at your new template.
Extending admin/cms/page/plugin/change_form.html ensures that you’ll keep a unified look and func-
tionality across your plugins.
There are various reasons why you might want to do this. For example, you might have a snippet of JavaScript that
needs to refer to a template variable), which you’d likely place in {% block extrahead %}, after a {{ block.
super }} to inherit the existing items that were in the parent template.
Handling media
If your plugin depends on certain media files, JavaScript or stylesheets, you can include them from your plugin
template using django-sekizai. Your CMS templates are always enforced to have the css and js sekizai namespaces,
therefore those should be used to include the respective files. For more information about django-sekizai, please refer
to the django-sekizai documentation.
Note that sekizai can’t help you with the admin-side plugin templates - what follows is for your plugins’ output
templates.
Sekizai style
To fully harness the power of django-sekizai, it is helpful to have a consistent style on how to use it. Here is a set of
conventions that should be followed (but don’t necessarily need to be):

• One bit per addtoblock. Always include one external CSS or JS file per addtoblock or one snippet per
addtoblock. This is needed so django-sekizai properly detects duplicate files.
• External files should be on one line, with no spaces or newlines between the addtoblock tag and the HTML
tags.
• When using embedded javascript or CSS, the HTML tags should be on a newline.
A good example:
{% load sekizai_tags %}
{% addtoblock "js" %}<script type="text/javascript" src="{{ MEDIA_URL }}myplugin/js/

˓→myjsfile.js"></script>{% endaddtoblock %}

˓→myotherfile.js"></script>{% endaddtoblock %}
{% addtoblock "css" %}<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{ MEDIA_URL }}

˓→myplugin/css/astylesheet.css">{% endaddtoblock %}
{% addtoblock "js" %}
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
doSomething();
});
</script>
{% endaddtoblock %}
A bad example:
{% load sekizai_tags %}

˓→myjsfile.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{{ MEDIA_URL }}myplugin/js/myotherfile.js"></

˓→script>{% endaddtoblock %}
{% addtoblock "css" %}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{ MEDIA_URL }}myplugin/css/
˓→astylesheet.css"></script>
{% endaddtoblock %}
{% addtoblock "js" %}<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
doSomething();
});
</script>{% endaddtoblock %}
Plugin Context
The plugin has access to the django template context. You can override variables using the with tag.
Example:
{% with 320 as width %}{% placeholder "content" %}{% endwith %}
Plugin Context Processors
Plugin context processors are callables that modify all plugins’ context before rendering. They are enabled using the
CMS_PLUGIN_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS setting.

A plugin context processor takes 3 arguments:

• instance: The instance of the plugin model
• placeholder: The instance of the placeholder this plugin appears in.
• context: The context that is in use, including the request.
The return value should be a dictionary containing any variables to be added to the context.
Example:
def add_verbose_name(instance, placeholder, context):

'''
This plugin context processor adds the plugin model's verbose_name to context.
'''
return {'verbose_name': instance._meta.verbose_name}
Plugin Processors
Plugin processors are callables that modify all plugins’ output after rendering. They are enabled using the
CMS_PLUGIN_PROCESSORS setting.
A plugin processor takes 4 arguments:
• placeholder: The instance of the placeholder this plugin appears in.
• rendered_content: A string containing the rendered content of the plugin.
• original_context: The original context for the template used to render the plugin.
Note: Plugin processors are also applied to plugins embedded in Text plugins (and any custom plugin allowing nested
plugins). Depending on what your processor does, this might break the output. For example, if your processor wraps
the output in a div tag, you might end up having div tags inside of p tags, which is invalid. You can prevent such
cases by returning rendered_content unchanged if instance._render_meta.text_enabled is True,
which is the case when rendering an embedded plugin.
Example
Suppose you want to wrap each plugin in the main placeholder in a colored box but it would be too complicated to
edit each individual plugin’s template:
In your settings.py:
CMS_PLUGIN_PROCESSORS = (
'yourapp.cms_plugin_processors.wrap_in_colored_box',
)
In your yourapp.cms_plugin_processors.py:
def wrap_in_colored_box(instance, placeholder, rendered_content, original_context):

'''
This plugin processor wraps each plugin's output in a colored box if it is in the
˓→"main" placeholder.


'''
# Plugins not in the main placeholder should remain unchanged
# Plugins embedded in Text should remain unchanged in order not to break output
if placeholder.slot != 'main' or (instance._render_meta.text_enabled and instance.
˓→parent):
return rendered_content
else:
from django.template import Context, Template
# For simplicity's sake, construct the template from a string:
t = Template('<div style="border: 10px {{ border_color }} solid; background: {
˓→{ background_color }};">{{ content|safe }}</div>')
# Prepare that template's context:

c = Context({
'content': rendered_content,
# Some plugin models might allow you to customise the colors,
# for others, use default colors:
'background_color': instance.background_color if hasattr(instance,
˓→'background_color') else 'lightyellow',
'border_color': instance.border_color if hasattr(instance, 'border_color

˓→') else 'lightblue',
})
# Finally, render the content through that template, and return the output
return t.render(c)
Nested Plugins
You can nest CMS Plugins in themselves. There’s a few things required to achieve this functionality:
models.py:
class ParentPlugin(CMSPlugin):
# add your fields here
class ChildPlugin(CMSPlugin):
# add your fields here
cms_plugins.py:
from .models import ParentPlugin, ChildPlugin
class ParentCMSPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
render_template = 'parent.html'
name = 'Parent'
model = ParentPlugin
allow_children = True # This enables the parent plugin to accept child plugins
# You can also specify a list of plugins that are accepted as children,
# or leave it away completely to accept all
# child_classes = ['ChildCMSPlugin']

context = super(ParentCMSPlugin, self).render(context, instance, placeholder)
return context


class ChildCMSPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
render_template = 'child.html'
name = 'Child'
model = ChildPlugin
require_parent = True # Is it required that this plugin is a child of another
˓→plugin?
# You can also specify a list of plugins that are accepted as parents,
# or leave it away completely to accept all
# parent_classes = ['ParentCMSPlugin']

context = super(ChildCMSPlugin, self).render(context, instance, placeholder)
return context
parent.html:
{% load cms_tags %}
<div class="plugin parent">

{% for plugin in instance.child_plugin_instances %}
{% render_plugin plugin %}
{% endfor %}
</div>
child.html:
<div class="plugin child">
{{ instance }}
</div>
Extending context menus of placeholders or plugins
There are three possibilities to extend the context menus of placeholders or plugins.
• You can either extend a placeholder context menu.
• You can extend all plugin context menus.
• You can extend the current plugin context menu.
For this purpose you can overwrite 3 methods on CMSPluginBase.
• get_extra_placeholder_menu_items()
• get_extra_global_plugin_menu_items()
• get_extra_local_plugin_menu_items()
Example:
class AliasPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
name = _("Alias")
allow_children = False
model = AliasPluginModel
render_template = "cms/plugins/alias.html"



context = super(AliasPlugin, self).render(context, instance, placeholder)
if instance.plugin_id:
plugins = instance.plugin.get_descendants(include_self=True).order_by(
˓→'placeholder', 'tree_id', 'level',
˓→ 'position')
plugins = downcast_plugins(plugins)
plugins[0].parent_id = None
plugins = build_plugin_tree(plugins)
context['plugins'] = plugins
if instance.alias_placeholder_id:
content = render_placeholder(instance.alias_placeholder, context)
print content
context['content'] = mark_safe(content)
return context
def get_extra_global_plugin_menu_items(self, request, plugin):

return [
PluginMenuItem(
_("Create Alias"),
reverse("admin:cms_create_alias"),
data={'plugin_id': plugin.pk, 'csrfmiddlewaretoken': get_
˓→token(request)},
)
]
def get_extra_placeholder_menu_items(self, request, placeholder):

return [
PluginMenuItem(
_("Create Alias"),
reverse("admin:cms_create_alias"),
data={'placeholder_id': placeholder.pk, 'csrfmiddlewaretoken': get_
˓→token(request)},
)
]
def get_plugin_urls(self):
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^create_alias/$', self.create_alias, name='cms_create_alias'),
]
return urlpatterns
def create_alias(self, request):

if not request.user.is_staff:
return HttpResponseForbidden("not enough privileges")
if not 'plugin_id' in request.POST and not 'placeholder_id' in request.POST:
return HttpResponseBadRequest("plugin_id or placeholder_id POST parameter
˓→missing.")
plugin = None
placeholder = None
if 'plugin_id' in request.POST:
pk = request.POST['plugin_id']
try:
plugin = CMSPlugin.objects.get(pk=pk)
except CMSPlugin.DoesNotExist:
return HttpResponseBadRequest("plugin with id %s not found." % pk)
if 'placeholder_id' in request.POST:


pk = request.POST['placeholder_id']
try:
placeholder = Placeholder.objects.get(pk=pk)
except Placeholder.DoesNotExist:
return HttpResponseBadRequest("placeholder with id %s not found." %
˓→ pk)
if not placeholder.has_change_permission(request):
return HttpResponseBadRequest("You do not have enough permission to
˓→alias this placeholder.")
clipboard = request.toolbar.clipboard
clipboard.cmsplugin_set.all().delete()
language = request.LANGUAGE_CODE
if plugin:
language = plugin.language
alias = AliasPluginModel(language=language, placeholder=clipboard, plugin_
˓→type="AliasPlugin")
if plugin:
alias.plugin = plugin
if placeholder:
alias.alias_placeholder = placeholder
alias.save()
return HttpResponse("ok")
Plugin data migrations
Due to the migration from Django MPTT to django-treebeard in version 3.1, the plugin model is different between
the two versions. Schema migrations are not affected as the migration systems (both South and Django) detects the
different bases.
Data migrations are a different story, though.
If your data migration does something like:
MyPlugin = apps.get_model('my_app', 'MyPlugin')
for plugin in MyPlugin.objects.all():

... do something ...
You may end up with an error like django.db.utils.OperationalError: (1054, "Unknown

column 'cms_cmsplugin.level' in 'field list'") because depending on the order the migrations
are executed, the historical models may be out of sync with the applied database schema.
To keep compatibility with 3.0 and 3.x you can force the data migration to run before the django CMS migration that
creates treebeard fields, by doing this the data migration will always be executed on the “old” database schema and no
conflict will exist.
For South migrations add this:
from distutils.version import LooseVersion
import cms
USES_TREEBEARD = LooseVersion(cms.__version__) >= LooseVersion('3.1')
class Migration(DataMigration):
if USES_TREEBEARD:
needed_by = [


('cms', '0070_auto__add_field_cmsplugin_path__add_field_cmsplugin_depth__
˓→add_field_c')
For Django migrations add this:
from distutils.version import LooseVersion

import cms
USES_TREEBEARD = LooseVersion(cms.__version__) >= LooseVersion('3.1')
class Migration(migrations.Migration):
if USES_TREEBEARD:
run_before = [
('cms', '0004_auto_20140924_1038')
]
How to create apphooks
An apphook allows you to attach a Django application to a page. For example, you might have a news application that
you’d like integrated with django CMS. In this case, you can create a normal django CMS page without any content
of its own, and attach the news application to the page; the news application’s content will be delivered at the page’s
URL.
All URLs in that URL path will be passed to the attached application’s URL configs.
The Tutorials section contains a basic guide to getting started with apphooks. This document assumes more familiarity
with the CMS generally.
The basics of apphook creation
To create an apphook, create a cms_apps.py file in your application.

The file needs to contain a CMSApp sub-class. For example:
from cms.app_base import CMSApp

@apphook_pool.register
class MyApphook(CMSApp):
app_name = "myapp" # must match the application namespace
name = "My Apphook"

return ["myapp.urls"] # replace this with the path to your application's URLs
˓→module
Changed in version 3.3: CMSApp.get_urls() replaces CMSApp.urls. urls was removed in version 3.5.
Apphooks for namespaced applications
Your application should use namespaced URLs.

In the example above, the application uses the myapp namespace. Your CMSApp sub-class must reflect the applica-
tion’s namespace in the app_name attribute.
The application may specify a namespace by supplying an app_name in its urls.py, or its documentation might
advise that you when include its URLs, you do it thus:
url(r'^myapp/', include('myapp.urls', app_name='myapp'))
If you fail to do this, then any templates in the application that invoke URLs using the form {%
url 'myapp:index' %} or views that call (for example) reverse('myapp:index') will throw a
NoReverseMatch error.
Apphooks for non-namespaced applications
If you are writing apphooks for third-party applications, you may find one that in fact does not have an application
namespace for its URLs. Such an application is liable to tun into namespace conflicts, and doesn’t represent good
practice.
However if you do encounter such an application, your own apphook for it will need in turn to forgo the app_name
attribute.
Note that unlike apphooks without app_name attributes can be attached only to one page at a time; attempting to
apply them a second time will cause an error. Only one instance of these apphooks can exist.
See Attaching an application multiple times for more on having multiple apphook instances.
Returning apphook URLs manually
Instead of defining the URL patterns in another file myapp/urls.py, it also is possible to return them manually, for
example if you need to override the set provided. An example:
from django.conf.urls import url

from myapp.views import SomeListView, SomeDetailView
# ...
return [
url(r'^$', SomeListView.as_view()),
url(r'^(?P<slug>[\w-]+)/?$', SomeDetailView.as_view()),
]
However, it’s much neater to keep them in the application’s urls.py, where they can easily be reused.
Loading new and re-configured apphooks
Certain apphook-related changes require server restarts in order to be loaded.

Whenever you:
• add or remove an apphook
• change the slug of a page containing an apphook or the slug of a page which has a descendant with an apphook
the URL caches must be reloaded.

If you have the cms.middleware.utils.ApphookReloadMiddleware installed, which is recommended, the server will do
it for you by re-initialising the URL patterns automatically.
Otherwise, you will need to restart the server manually.
Using an apphook
Once your apphook has been set up and loaded, you’ll now be able to select the Application that’s hooked into that
page from its Advanced settings.
Note: An apphook won’t actually do anything until the page it belongs to is published. Take note that this also means
all parent pages must also be published.
The apphook attaches all of the apphooked application’s URLs to the page; its root URL will be the page’s own URL,
and any lower-level URLs will be on the same URL path.
So, given an application with the urls.py for the views index_view and archive_view:
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^$', index_view),
url(r'ârchive/$', archive_view),
]
attached to a page whose URL path is /hello/world/, the views will be exposed as follows:
• index_view at /hello/world/
• archive_view at /hello/world/archive/
Sub-pages of an apphooked page
Important: Don’t add child pages to a page with an apphook.

The apphook “swallows” all URLs below that of the page, handing them over to the attached application. If you have
any child pages of the apphooked page, django CMS will not be able to serve them reliably.
Managing apphooks
Uninstalling an apphook with applied instances
If you remove an apphook class from your system (in effect uninstalling it) that still has instances applied to pages,
django CMS tries to handle this as gracefully as possible:
• Affected pages still maintain a record of the applied apphook; if the apphook class is subsequently reinstated, it
will work as before.
• The page list will show apphook indicators where appropriate.
• The page will otherwise behave like a normal django CMS page, and display its placeholders in the usual way.
• If you save the page’s Advanced settings, the apphook will be removed.

Management commands
You can clear uninstalled apphook instances using the CMS management command uninstall apphooks. For
example:
manage.py cms uninstall apphooks MyApphook MyOtherApphook
You can get a list of installed apphooks using the cms list; in this case:
manage.py cms list apphooks
See the Management commands reference for more information.
Adding menus to apphooks
Generally, it is recommended to allow the user to control whether a menu is attached to a page (See Attach Menus for
more on these menus). However, an apphook can be made to do this automatically if required. It will behave just as if
the menu had been attached to the page using its Advanced settings).
Menus can be added to an apphook using the get_menus() method. On the basis of the example above:
# [...]
from myapp.cms_menus import MyAppMenu
# [...]
def get_menus(self, page=None, language=None, **kwargs):
return [MyAppMenu]
Changed in version 3.3: CMSApp.get_menus() replaces CMSApp.menus. The menus attribute is now depre-
cated and has been removed in version 3.5.
The menus returned in the get_menus() method need to return a list of nodes, in their get_nodes() methods.
Attach Menus has more information on creating menu classes that generate nodes.
You can return multiple menu classes; all will be attached to the same page:
def get_menus(self, page=None, language=None, **kwargs):

return [MyAppMenu, CategoryMenu]
Managing permissions on apphooks
By default the content represented by an apphook has the same permissions set as the page it is assigned to. So if
for example a page requires the user to be logged in, then the attached apphook and all its URLs will have the same
requirements.
To disable this behaviour set permissions = False on your apphook:
[...]
permissions = False
If you still want some of your views to use the CMS’s permission checks you can enable them via a decorator, cms.
utils.decorators.cms_perms
Here is a simple example:

from cms.utils.decorators import cms_perms
@cms_perms
def my_view(request, **kw):
...
If you make your own permission checks in your application, then use the exclude_permissions property of the
apphook:
[...]
permissions = True
exclude_permissions = ["some_nested_app"]
where you provide the name of the application in question
Automatically restart server on apphook changes
As mentioned above, whenever you:

• add or remove an apphook
• change the slug of a page containing an apphook
• change the slug of a page with a descendant with an apphook
The CMS the server will reload its URL caches. It does this by listening for the signal cms.signals.
urls_need_reloading.
Warning: This signal does not actually do anything itself. For automated server restarting you need to implement
logic in your project that gets executed whenever this signal is fired. Because there are many ways of deploying
Django applications, there is no way we can provide a generic solution for this problem that will always work.
The signal is fired after a request - for example, upon saving a page’s settings. If you change and apphook’s setting
via an API the signal won’t fire until a subsequent request.
Apphooks and placeholder template tags
It’s important to understand that while an apphooked application takes over the CMS page at that location completely,
depending on how the application’s templates extend other templates, a django CMS {% placeholder %} tem-
plate tag may be invoked - but will not work.
{% static_placeholder %} tags on the other hand are not page-specific and will function normally.
How to manage complex apphook configuration
In How to create apphooks we discuss some basic points of using apphooks. In this document we will cover some
more complex implementation possibilities.

Attaching an application multiple times
Define a namespace at class-level
If you want to attach an application multiple times to different pages, then the class defining the apphook must have
an app_name attribute:
name = _("My Apphook")
app_name = "myapp"

return ["myapp.urls"]
The app_name does three key things:

• It provides the fallback namespace for views and templates that reverse URLs.
• It exposes the Application instance name field in the page admin when applying an apphook.
• It sets the default apphook instance name (which you’ll see in the Application instance name field).
We’ll explain these with an example. Let’s suppose that your application’s views or templates use
reverse('myapp:index') or {% url 'myapp:index' %}.
In this case the namespace of any apphooks you apply must match myapp. If they don’t, your pages using them will
throw up a NoReverseMatch error.
You can set the namespace for the instance of the apphook in the Application instance name field. However, you’ll
need to set that to something different if an instance with that value already exists. In this case, as long as app_name
= "myapp" it doesn’t matter; even if the system doesn’t find a match with the name of the instance it will fall back
to the one hard-wired into the class.
In other words setting app_name correctly guarantees that URL-reversing will work, because it sets the fallback
namespace appropriately.
Set a namespace at instance-level
On the other hand, the Application instance name will override the app_name if a match is found.
This arrangement allows you to use multiple application instances and namespaces if that flexibility is required, while
guaranteeing a simple way to make it work when it’s not.
Django’s Reversing namespaced URLs documentation provides more information on how this works, but the simpli-
fied version is:
1. First, it’ll try to find a match for the Application instance name.
2. If it fails, it will try to find a match for the app_name.
Apphook configurations
Namespacing your apphooks also makes it possible to manage additional database-stored apphook configuration, on
an instance-by-instance basis.

Basic concepts
To capture the configuration that different instances of an apphook can take, a Django model needs to be created - each
apphook instance will be an instance of that model, and administered through the Django admin in the usual way.
Once set up, an apphook configuration can be applied to to an apphook instance, in the Advanced settings of the page
the apphook instance belongs to:
The configuration is then loaded in the application’s views for that namespace, and will be used to determined how it
behaves.
Creating an application configuration in fact creates an apphook instance namespace. Once created, the namespace
of a configuration cannot be changed - if a different namespace is required, a new configuration will also need to be
created.
An example apphook configuration
In order to illustrate how this all works, we’ll create a new FAQ application, that provides a simple list of questions
and answers, together with an apphook class and an apphook configuration model that allows it to exist in multiple
places on the site in multiple configurations.
We’ll assume that you have a working django CMS project running already.
Using helper applications
We’ll use a couple of simple helper applications for this example, just to make our work easier.
Aldryn Apphooks Config
Aldryn Apphooks Config is a helper application that makes it easier to develop configurable apphooks. For example,
it provides an AppHookConfig for you to subclass, and other useful components to save you time.
In this example, we’ll use Aldryn Apphooks Config, as we recommend it. However, you don’t have to use it in your
own projects; if you prefer to can build the code you require by hand.
Use pip install aldryn-apphooks-config to install it.
Aldryn Apphooks Config in turn installs Django AppData, which provides an elegant way for an application to extend
another; we’ll make use of this too.
Create the new FAQ application
python manage.py startapp faq

Create the FAQ Entry model
models.py:
from aldryn_apphooks_config.fields import AppHookConfigField

from aldryn_apphooks_config.managers import AppHookConfigManager
from faq.cms_appconfig import FaqConfig
class Entry(models.Model):
app_config = AppHookConfigField(FaqConfig)
question = models.TextField(blank=True, default='')
answer = models.TextField()
objects = AppHookConfigManager()
def __unicode__(self):
return self.question
class Meta:
verbose_name_plural = 'entries'
The app_config field is a ForeignKey to an apphook configuration model; we’ll create it in a moment. This
model will hold the specific namespace configuration, and makes it possible to assign each FAQ Entry to a namespace.
The custom AppHookConfigManager is there to make it easy to filter the queryset of Entries using a convenient
shortcut: Entry.objects.namespace('foobar').
Define the AppHookConfig subclass
In a new file cms_appconfig.py in the FAQ application:
from aldryn_apphooks_config.models import AppHookConfig

from aldryn_apphooks_config.utils import setup_config
from app_data import AppDataForm
class FaqConfig(AppHookConfig):
paginate_by = models.PositiveIntegerField(
_('Paginate size'),
blank=False,
default=5,
)
class FaqConfigForm(AppDataForm):
title = forms.CharField()
setup_config(FaqConfigForm, FaqConfig)
The implementation can be left completely empty, as the minimal schema is already defined in the abstract parent
model provided by Aldryn Apphooks Config.

Here though we’re defining an extra field on model, paginate_by. We’ll use it later to control how many entries
should be displayed per page.
We also set up a FaqConfigForm, which uses AppDataForm to add a field to FaqConfig without actually
touching its model.
The title field could also just be a model field, like paginate_by. But we’re using the AppDataForm to demonstrate
this capability.
Define its admin properties
In admin.py we need to define all fields we’d like to display:

from .cms_appconfig import FaqConfig
from .models import Entry
from aldryn_apphooks_config.admin import ModelAppHookConfig, BaseAppHookConfig
class EntryAdmin(ModelAppHookConfig, admin.ModelAdmin):

list_display = (
'question',
'answer',
'app_config',
)
list_filter = (
'app_config',
)
admin.site.register(Entry, EntryAdmin)
class FaqConfigAdmin(BaseAppHookConfig, admin.ModelAdmin):

def get_config_fields(self):
return (
'paginate_by',
'config.title',
)
admin.site.register(FaqConfig, FaqConfigAdmin)
get_config_fields defines the fields that should be displayed. Any fields using the AppData forms need to be
prefixed by config..
Define the apphook itself
Now let’s create the apphook, and set it up with support for multiple instances. In cms_apps.py:
from aldryn_apphooks_config.app_base import CMSConfigApp

from .cms_appconfig import FaqConfig
@apphook_pool.register
class FaqApp(CMSConfigApp):
name = _("Faq App")


urls = ["faq.urls"]
app_name = "faq"
app_config = FaqConfig
Define a list view for FAQ entries
We have all the basics in place. Now we’ll add a list view for the FAQ entries that only displays entries for the currently
used namespace. In views.py:
from aldryn_apphooks_config.mixins import AppConfigMixin
from django.views import generic
from .models import Entry
class IndexView(AppConfigMixin, generic.ListView):

model = Entry
template_name = 'faq/index.html'
def get_queryset(self):
qs = super(IndexView, self).get_queryset()
return qs.namespace(self.namespace)
def get_paginate_by(self, queryset):

try:
return self.config.paginate_by
except AttributeError:
return 10
AppConfigMixin saves you the work of setting any attributes in your view - it automatically sets, for the view class
instance:
• current namespace in self.namespace
• namespace configuration (the instance of FaqConfig) in self.config
• current application in the current_app parameter passed to the Response class
In this case we’re filtering to only show entries assigned to the current namespace in get_queryset.
qs.namespace, thanks to the model manager we defined earlier, is the equivalent of qs.
filter(app_config__namespace=self.namespace).
In get_paginate_by we use the value from our appconfig model.
Define a template
In faq/templates/faq/index.html:
{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{{ view.config.title }}</h1>
<p>Namespace: {{ view.namespace }}</p>
<dl>
{% for entry in object_list %}
<dt>{{ entry.question }}</dt>


<dd>{{ entry.answer }}</dd>
{% endfor %}
</dl>
{% if is_paginated %}
<div class="pagination">
<span class="step-links">
{% if page_obj.has_previous %}
<a href="?page={{ page_obj.previous_page_number }}">previous</a>
{% else %}
previous
{% endif %}
<span class="current">
Page {{ page_obj.number }} of {{ page_obj.paginator.num_pages }}.
</span>
{% if page_obj.has_next %}
<a href="?page={{ page_obj.next_page_number }}">next</a>
{% else %}
next
{% endif %}
</span>
</div>
{% endif %}
{% endblock %}
URLconf
urls.py:
from django.conf.urls import url

from . import views
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^$', views.IndexView.as_view(), name='index'),
]
Put it all together
Finally, we add faq to INSTALLED_APPS, then create and run migrations:
python manage.py makemigrations faq

python manage.py migrate faq
Now we should be all set.

Create two pages with the faq apphook (don’t forget to publish them), with different namespaces and different
configurations. Also create some entries assigned to the two namespaces.
You can experiment with the different configured behaviours (in this case, only pagination is available), and the way
that different Entry instances can be associated with a specific apphook.

How to extend the Toolbar
The django CMS toolbar provides an API that allows you to add, remove and manipulate toolbar items in your own
code. It helps you to integrate django CMS’s frontend editing mode into your application, and provide your users with
a streamlined editing experience.
See also:
• Extending the Toolbar in the tutorial
• Toolbar API reference
Create a cms_toolbars.py file
In order to interact with the toolbar API, you need to create a CMSToolbar sub-class in your own code, and register
it.
This class should be created in your application’s cms_toolbars.py file, where it will be discovered automatically
when the Django runserver starts.
You can also use the CMS_TOOLBARS to control which toolbar classes are loaded.
Use the high-level toolbar APIs

You will find a toolbar object in the request in your views, and you may be tempted to do things with it, like:
toolbar = request.toolbar
toolbar.add_modal_button('Do not touch', dangerous_button_url)
- but you should not, in the same way that it is not recommended to poke tweezers into electrical sockets just because
you can.
Instead, you should only interact with the toolbar using a CMSToolbar class, and the documented APIs for managing
it.
Similarly, although a generic add_item() method is available, we provide higher-level methods for handling spe-
cific item types, and it is always recommended that you use these instead.
Define and register a CMSToolbar sub-class

class MyToolbarClass(CMSToolbar):
[...]
toolbar_pool.register(MyToolbarClass)
The cms.toolbar_pool.ToolbarPool.register method can also be used as a decorator:
@toolbar_pool.register
class MyToolbarClass(CMSToolbar):
[...]

Populate the toolbar
Two methods are available to control what will appear in the django CMS toolbar:
• populate(), which is called before the rest of the page is rendered
• post_template_populate(), which is called after the page’s template is rendered
The latter method allows you to manage the toolbar based on the contents of the page, such as the state of plugins or
placeholders, but unless you need to do this, you should opt for the more simple populate() method.
class MyToolbar(CMSToolbar):
def populate(self):
# add items to the toolbar
Now you have to decide exactly what items will appear in your toolbar. These can include:
• menus
• buttons and button lists
• various other toolbar items
Add links and buttons to the toolbar
You can add links and buttons as entries to a menu instance, using the various add_ methods.
Action Text link variant Button variant

Open link add_link_item() add_button()
Open link in sideframe add_sideframe_item() add_sideframe_button()
Open link in modal add_modal_item() add_modal_button()
POST action add_ajax_item()
The basic form for using any of these is:
def populate(self):
self.toolbar.add_link_item( # or add_button(), add_modal_item(), etc

name='A link',
url=url
)
Note that although these toolbar items may take various positional arguments in their methods, we strongly recom-
mend using named arguments, as above. This will help ensure that your own toolbar classes and methods survive
upgrades. See the reference documentation linked to in the table above for details of the signature of each method.
Opening a URL in an iframe
A common case is to provide a URL that opens in a sideframe or modal dialog on the same page. Administration. . .
in the site menu, that opens the Django admin in a sideframe, is a good example of this. Both the sideframe and modal
are HTML iframes.
A typical use for a sideframe is to display an admin list (similar to that used in the tutorial example):


[...]
def populate(self):
self.toolbar.add_sideframe_item(
name='Poll list',
url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_changelist')
)
A typical use for a modal item is to display the admin for a model instance:
self.toolbar.add_modal_item(name='Add new poll', url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_add'))
However, you are not restricted to these examples, and you may open any suitable resource inside the modal or
sideframe. Note that protocols may need to match and the requested resource must allow it.
Adding buttons to the toolbar
A button is a sub-class of cms.toolbar.items.Button

Buttons can also be added in a list - a ButtonList is a group of visually-linked buttons.
def populate(self):
button_list = self.toolbar.add_button_list()
button_list.add_button(name='Button 1', url=url_1)
button_list.add_button(name='Button 2', url=url_2)
Create a toolbar menu
The text link items described above can also be added as nodes to menus in the toolbar.
A menu is an instance of cms.toolbar.items.Menu. In your CMSToolbar sub-class, you can either create
a menu, or identify one that already exists (in order to add new items to it, for example), in the populate() or
post_template_populate() methods, using get_or_create_menu().
def populate(self):
menu = self.toolbar.get_or_create_menu(
key='polls_cms_integration',
verbose_name='Polls'
)
The key is unique menu identifier; verbose_name is what will be displayed in the menu. If you know a menu
already exists, you can obtain it with get_menu().
Note: It’s recommended to namespace your key with the application name. Otherwise, another application could
unexpectedly interfere with your menu.
Once you have your menu, you can add items to it in much the same way that you add them to the toolbar. For
example:

def populate(self):
menu = [...]
name='Poll list',
url=admin_reverse('polls_poll_changelist')
)
To add a menu divider
add_break() will place a Break, a visual divider, in a menu list, to allow grouping of items. For example:
menu.add_break(identifier='settings_section')
To add a sub-menu
A sub-menu is a menu that belongs to another Menu:
def populate(self):
menu = [...]
submenu = menu.get_or_create_menu(
key='sub_menu_key',
verbose_name='My sub-menu'
)
You can then add items to the sub-menu in the same way as in the examples above. Note that a sub-menu is an instance
of SubMenu, and may not itself have further sub-menus.
Finding existing toolbar items
get_or_create_menu() and get_menu()
A number of methods and useful constants exist to get hold of and manipulate existing toolbar items. For example, to
find (using get_menu()) and rename the Site menu:
from cms.cms_toolbars import ADMIN_MENU_IDENTIFIER
class ManipulativeToolbar(CMSToolbar):
def populate(self):
admin_menu = self.toolbar.get_menu(ADMIN_MENU_IDENTIFIER)
admin_menu.name = "Site"
get_or_create_menu() will equally well find the same menu, and also has the advantages that:
• it can update the item’s attributes itself (self.toolbar.get_or_create_menu(ADMIN_MENU_IDENTIFIER,
'Site'))
• if the item doesn’t exist, it will create it rather than raising an error.

find_items() and find_first()
Search for items by their type:
def populate(self):
self.toolbar.find_items(item_type=LinkItem)
will find all LinkItems in the toolbar (but not for example in the menus in the toolbar - it doesn’t search other items
in the toolbar for items of their own).
find_items() returns a list of ItemSearchResult objects; find_first() returns the first object in that
list. They share similar behaviour so the examples here will use find_items() only.
The item_type argument is always required, but you can refine the search by using their other attributes, for exam-
ple:
self.toolbar.find_items(Menu, disabled=True))
Note that you can use these two methods to search Menu and SubMenu classes for items too.
Control the position of items in the toolbar
Methods to add menu items to the toolbar take an optional position argument, that can be used to control where
the item will be inserted.
By default (position=None) the item will be inserted after existing items in the same level of the hierarchy (a new
sub-menu will become the last sub-menu of the menu, a new menu will be become the last menu in the toolbar, and
so on).
A position of 0 will insert the item before all the others.
If you already have an object, you can use that as a reference too. For example:
def populate(self):
link = self.toolbar.add_link_item('Link', url=link_url)

self.toolbar.add_button('Button', url=button_url, position=link)
will add the new button before the link item.

Finally, you can use a ItemSearchResult as a position:
def populate(self):
self.toolbar.add_link_item('Link', url=link_url)
link = self.toolbar.find_first(LinkItem)
self.toolbar.add_button('Button', url=button_url, position=link)
and since the ItemSearchResult can be cast to an integer, you could even do:
self.toolbar.add_button(‘Button’, url=button_url, position=link+1)

Control how and when the toolbar appears
By default, your CMSToolbar sub-class will be active (i.e. its populate methods will be called) in the toolbar
on every page, when the user is_staff. Sometimes however a CMSToolbar sub-class should only populate the
toolbar when visiting pages associated with a particular application.
A CMSToolbar sub-class has a useful attribute that can help determine whether a toolbar should be activated.
is_current_app is True when the application containing the toolbar class matches the application handling
the request.
This allows you to activate it selectively, for example:
def populate(self):
return
[...]
If your toolbar class is in another application than the one you want it to be active for, you can list any applications it
should support when you create the class:
supported_apps = ['some_app']
supported_apps is a tuple of application dotted paths (e.g: supported_apps = ('whatever.path.

app', 'another.path.app').
The attribute app_path will contain the name of the application handling the current request - if app_path is in
supported_apps, then is_current_app will be True.
Modifying an existing toolbar
If you need to modify an existing toolbar (say to change an attribute or the behaviour of a method) you can do this by
creating a sub-class of it that implements the required changes, and registering that instead of the original.
The original can be unregistered using toolbar_pool.unregister(), as in the example below. Alternatively
if you orginally invoked the toolbar class using CMS_TOOLBARS, you will need to modify that to refer to the new one
instead.
An example, in which we unregister the original and register our own:

from third_party_app.cms_toolbar import ThirdPartyToolbar
class MyBarToolbar(ThirdPartyToolbar):
[...]
toolbar_pool.unregister(ThirdPartyToolbar)
Detecting URL changes to an object
If you want to watch for object creation or editing of models and redirect after they have been added or changed add a
watch_models attribute to your toolbar.
Example:

watch_models = [Poll]
def populate(self):
...
After you add this every change to an instance of Poll via sideframe or modal window will trigger a redirect to the
URL of the poll instance that was edited, according to the toolbar status:
• in draft mode the get_draft_url() is returned (or get_absolute_url() if the former does not exist)
• in live mode, and the method exists, get_public_url() is returned.
Frontend
If you need to interact with the toolbar, or otherwise account for it in your site’s frontend code, it provides CSS and
JavaScript hooks for you to use.
It will add various classes to the page’s <html> element:
• cms-ready, when the toolbar is ready
• cms-toolbar-expanded, when the toolbar is fully expanded
• cms-toolbar-expanding and cms-toolbar-collapsing during toolbar animation.
The toolbar also fires a JavaScript event called cms-ready on the document. You can listen to this event using
jQuery:
CMS.$(document).on('cms-ready', function () { ... });
How to customise navigation menus
In this document we discuss three different way of customising the navigation menus of django CMS sites.
1. Menus: Statically extend the menu entries
2. Attach Menus: Attach your menu to a page.
3. Navigation Modifiers: Modify the whole menu tree
Menus
Create a cms_menus.py in your application, with the following:
from menus.base import Menu, NavigationNode

class TestMenu(Menu):

nodes = []
n = NavigationNode(_('sample root page'), "/", 1)
n2 = NavigationNode(_('sample settings page'), "/bye/", 2)


n3 = NavigationNode(_('sample account page'), "/hello/", 3)
n4 = NavigationNode(_('sample my profile page'), "/hello/world/", 4, 3)
nodes.append(n)
nodes.append(n2)
nodes.append(n3)
nodes.append(n4)
return nodes
menu_pool.register_menu(TestMenu)
Note: Up to version 3.1 this module was named menu.py. Please update your existing modules to the new naming
convention. Support for the old name will be removed in version 3.5.
If you refresh a page you should now see the menu entries above. The get_nodes function should return a list of
NavigationNode instances. A menus.base.NavigationNode takes the following arguments:
title Text for the menu node
url URL for the menu node link
id A unique id for this menu
parent_id=None If this is a child of another node, supply the id of the parent here.
parent_namespace=None If the parent node is not from this menu you can give it the parent namespace. The
namespace is the name of the class. In the above example that would be: TestMenu
attr=None A dictionary of additional attributes you may want to use in a modifier or in the template
visible=True Whether or not this menu item should be visible
Additionally, each menus.base.NavigationNode provides a number of methods which are detailed in the
NavigationNode API references.
Customise menus at runtime
To adapt your menus according to request dependent conditions (say: anonymous/logged in user), you can use Navi-
gation Modifiers or you can make use of existing ones.
For example it’s possible to add {'visible_for_anonymous': False}/{'visible_for_authenticated':
False} attributes recognised by the django CMS core AuthVisibility modifier.
Complete example:
class UserMenu(Menu):
return [
NavigationNode(_("Profile"), reverse(profile), 1, attr={'visible_for_
˓→anonymous': False}),
NavigationNode(_("Log in"), reverse(login), 3, attr={'visible_for_

˓→authenticated': False}),
NavigationNode(_("Sign up"), reverse(logout), 4, attr={'visible_for_

˓→authenticated': False}),
NavigationNode(_("Log out"), reverse(logout), 2, attr={'visible_for_

˓→anonymous': False}),

Attach Menus
Classes that extend from menus.base.Menu always get attached to the root. But if you want the menu to be
attached to a CMS Page you can do that as well.
Instead of extending from Menu you need to extend from cms.menu_bases.CMSAttachMenu and you need to
define a name.
We will do that with the example from above:
from menus.base import NavigationNode

from cms.menu_bases import CMSAttachMenu
class TestMenu(CMSAttachMenu):
name = _("test menu")

nodes = []
n = NavigationNode(_('sample root page'), "/", 1)
n2 = NavigationNode(_('sample settings page'), "/bye/", 2)
n3 = NavigationNode(_('sample account page'), "/hello/", 3)
n4 = NavigationNode(_('sample my profile page'), "/hello/world/", 4, 3)
nodes.append(n)
nodes.append(n2)
nodes.append(n3)
nodes.append(n4)
return nodes
menu_pool.register_menu(TestMenu)
Now you can link this Menu to a page in the Advanced tab of the page settings under attached menu.
Navigation Modifiers
Navigation Modifiers give your application access to navigation menus.

A modifier can change the properties of existing nodes or rearrange entire menus.
Example use-cases
A simple example: you have a news application that publishes pages independently of django CMS. However, you
would like to integrate the application into the menu structure of your site, so that at appropriate places a News node
appears in the navigation menu.
In another example, you might want a particular attribute of your Pages to be available in menu templates. In order
to keep menu nodes lightweight (which can be important in a site with thousands of pages) they only contain the
minimum attributes required to generate a usable menu.
In both cases, a Navigation Modifier is the solution - in the first case, to add a new node at the appropriate place, and
in the second, to add a new attribute - on the attr attribute, rather than directly on the NavigationNode, to help
avoid conflicts - to all nodes in the menu.

How it works
Place your modifiers in your application’s cms_menus.py.

To make your modifier available, it then needs to be registered with menus.menu_pool.menu_pool.
Now, when a page is loaded and the menu generated, your modifier will be able to inspect and modify its nodes.
Here is an example of a simple modifier that places each Page’s changed_by attribute in the corresponding
NavigationNode:
from menus.base import Modifier
from cms.models import Page
class MyExampleModifier(Modifier):
"""
This modifier makes the changed_by attribute of a page
accessible for the menu system.
"""
def modify(self, request, nodes, namespace, root_id, post_cut, breadcrumb):
# only do something when the menu has already been cut
if post_cut:
# only consider nodes that refer to cms pages
# and put them in a dict for efficient access
page_nodes = {n.id: n for n in nodes if n.attr["is_page"]}
# retrieve the attributes of interest from the relevant pages
pages = Page.objects.filter(id__in=page_nodes.keys()).values('id',
˓→'changed_by')
# loop over all relevant pages

for page in pages:
# take the node referring to the page
node = page_nodes[page['id']]
# put the changed_by attribute on the node
node.attr["changed_by"] = page['changed_by']
return nodes
menu_pool.register_modifier(MyExampleModifier)
It has a method modify() that should return a list of NavigationNode instances. modify() should take the
following arguments:
request A Django request instance. You want to modify based on sessions, or user or permissions?
nodes All the nodes. Normally you want to return them again.
namespace A Menu Namespace. Only given if somebody requested a menu with only nodes from this namespace.
root_id Was a menu request based on an ID?
post_cut Every modifier is called two times. First on the whole tree. After that the tree gets cut to only show the
nodes that are shown in the current menu. After the cut the modifiers are called again with the final tree. If this
is the case post_cut is True.
breadcrumb Is this a breadcrumb call rather than a menu call?
Here is an example of a built-in modifier that marks all node levels:
class Level(Modifier):
"""


marks all node levels
"""
post_cut = True
def modify(self, request, nodes, namespace, root_id, post_cut, breadcrumb):

if breadcrumb:
return nodes
for node in nodes:
if not node.parent:
if post_cut:
node.menu_level = 0
else:
node.level = 0
self.mark_levels(node, post_cut)
return nodes
def mark_levels(self, node, post_cut):

for child in node.children:
if post_cut:
child.menu_level = node.menu_level + 1
else:
child.level = node.level + 1
self.mark_levels(child, post_cut)
menu_pool.register_modifier(Level)
Performance issues in menu modifiers
Navigation modifiers can quickly become a performance bottleneck. Each modifier is called multiple times: For the
breadcrumb (breadcrumb=True), for the whole menu tree (post_cut=False), for the menu tree cut to the
visible part (post_cut=True) and perhaps for each level of the navigation. Performing inefficient operations inside
a navigation modifier can hence lead to big performance issues. Some tips for keeping a modifier implementation fast:
• Specify when exactly the modifier is necessary (in breadcrumb, before or after cut).
• Only consider nodes and pages relevant for the modification.
• Perform as less database queries as possible (i.e. not in a loop).
• In database queries, fetch exactly the attributes you are interested in.
• If you have multiple modifications to do, try to apply them in the same method.
New in version 3.2.
How to implement content creation wizards
django CMS offers a framework for creating ‘wizards’ - helpers - for content editors.
They provide a simplified workflow for common tasks.
A django CMS Page wizard already exists, but you can create your own for other content types very easily.

Create a content-creation wizard
Creating a CMS content creation wizard for your own module is fairly easy.
To begin, create a file in the root level of your module called forms.py to create your form(s):
# my_apps/forms.py
class MyAppWizardForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = MyApp
exclude = []
Now create another file in the root level called cms_wizards.py. In this file, import Wizard as follows:

Then, simply subclass Wizard, instantiate it, then register it. If you were to do this for MyApp, it might look like
this:
# my_apps/cms_wizards.py

from .forms import MyAppWizardForm
class MyAppWizard(Wizard):
pass
my_app_wizard = MyAppWizard(
title="New MyApp",
weight=200,
form=MyAppWizardForm,
description="Create a new MyApp instance",
)
wizard_pool.register(my_app_wizard)
Note: If your model doesn’t define a get_absolute_url function then your wizard will require a get_success_url
method.
def get_success_url(self, obj, **kwargs):

"""
This should return the URL of the created object, «obj».
"""
if 'language' in kwargs:
with force_language(kwargs['language']):
url = obj.get_absolute_url()
else:
url = obj.get_absolute_url()

return url
That’s it!
Note: The module name cms_wizards is special, in that any such-named modules in your project’s Python path
will automatically be loaded, triggering the registration of any wizards found in them. Wizards may be declared and
registered in other modules, but they might not be automatically loaded.
The above example is using a ModelForm, but you can also use forms.Form. In this case, you must provide the
model class as another keyword argument when you instantiate the Wizard object.
For example:
# my_apps/forms.py
class MyAppWizardForm(forms.Form):
name = forms.CharField()
# my_apps/cms_wizards.py

from .forms import MyAppWizardForm

from .models import MyApp
pass
title="New MyApp",
weight=200,
model=MyApp,
)
You must subclass cms.wizards.wizard_base.Wizard to use it. This is because each wizard’s uniqueness is
determined by its class and module name.
See the Reference section on wizards for technical details of the wizards API.
How to extend Page & Title models
You can extend the cms.models.Page and cms.models.Title models with your own fields (e.g. adding
an icon for every page) by using the extension models: cms.extensions.PageExtension and cms.
extensions.TitleExtension, respectively.

Title vs Page extensions
The difference between a page extension and a title extension is related to the difference between the cms.models.
Page and cms.models.Title models.
• PageExtension: use to add fields that should have the same values for the different language versions of a
page - for example, an icon.
• TitleExtension: use to add fields that should have language-specific values for different language versions
of a page - for example, keywords.
Implement a basic extension
Three basic steps are required:

• add the extension model
• add the extension admin
• add a toolbar menu item for the extension
Page model extension example
The model
To add a field to the Page model, create a class that inherits from cms.extensions.PageExtension. Your
class should live in one of your applications’ models.py (or module).
Note: Since PageExtension (and TitleExtension) inherit from django.db.models.Model, you are
free to add any field you want but make sure you don’t use a unique constraint on any of your added fields because
uniqueness prevents the copy mechanism of the extension from working correctly. This means that you can’t use
one-to-one relations on the extension model.
Finally, you’ll need to register the model using extension_pool.

Here’s a simple example which adds an icon field to the page:
from cms.extensions import PageExtension
from cms.extensions.extension_pool import extension_pool
class IconExtension(PageExtension):
image = models.ImageField(upload_to='icons')
extension_pool.register(IconExtension)
Of course, you will need to make and run a migration for this new model.
The admin
To make your extension editable, you must first create an admin class that sub-classes cms.extensions.
PageExtensionAdmin. This admin handles page permissions.

Note: If you want to use your own admin class, make sure to exclude the live versions of the extensions by using
filter(extended_page__publisher_is_draft=True) on the queryset.
Continuing with the example model above, here’s a simple corresponding PageExtensionAdmin class:

from cms.extensions import PageExtensionAdmin
from .models import IconExtension
class IconExtensionAdmin(PageExtensionAdmin):
pass
admin.site.register(IconExtension, IconExtensionAdmin)
Since PageExtensionAdmin inherits from ModelAdmin, you’ll be able to use the normal set of Django
ModelAdmin properties appropriate to your needs.
Note: Note that the field that holds the relationship between the extension and a CMS Page is non-editable, so it does
not appear directly in the Page admin views. This may be addressed in a future update, but in the meantime the toolbar
provides access to it.
The toolbar item
You’ll also want to make your model editable from the cms toolbar in order to associate each instance of the extension
model with a page.
To add toolbar items for your extension create a file named cms_toolbars.py in one of your apps, and add the
relevant menu entries for the extension on each page.
Here’s a simple version for our example. This example adds a node to the existing Page menu, called Page icon. When
selected, it will open a modal dialog in which the Page icon field can be edited.

from cms.extensions.toolbar import ExtensionToolbar
class IconExtensionToolbar(ExtensionToolbar):
# defines the model for the current toolbar
model = IconExtension
def populate(self):
# setup the extension toolbar with permissions and sanity checks
current_page_menu = self._setup_extension_toolbar()
# if it's all ok
if current_page_menu:
# retrieves the instance of the current extension (if any) and the
˓→toolbar item URL


page_extension, url = self.get_page_extension_admin()
if url:
# adds a toolbar item in position 0 (at the top of the menu)
current_page_menu.add_modal_item(_('Page Icon'), url=url,
disabled=not self.toolbar.edit_mode_active, position=0)
Title model extension example
In this example, we’ll create a Rating extension field, that can be applied to each Title, in other words, to each
language version of each Page.
Note: Please refer to the more detailed discussion above of the Page model extension example, and in particular to
the special notes.
The model

from cms.extensions import TitleExtension
class RatingExtension(TitleExtension):
rating = models.IntegerField()
extension_pool.register(RatingExtension)
The admin

from cms.extensions import TitleExtensionAdmin
from .models import RatingExtension
class RatingExtensionAdmin(TitleExtensionAdmin):
pass
admin.site.register(RatingExtension, RatingExtensionAdmin)
The toolbar item
In this example, we need to loop over the titles for the page, and populate the menu with those.
from cms.extensions.toolbar import ExtensionToolbar


from .models import RatingExtension
from cms.utils import get_language_list # needed to get the page's languages
class RatingExtensionToolbar(ExtensionToolbar):
# defines the model for the current toolbar
model = RatingExtension
def populate(self):
# setup the extension toolbar with permissions and sanity checks
current_page_menu = self._setup_extension_toolbar()
# if it's all ok
if current_page_menu and self.toolbar.edit_mode_active:
# create a sub menu labelled "Ratings" at position 1 in the menu
sub_menu = self._get_sub_menu(
current_page_menu, 'submenu_label', 'Ratings', position=1
)
# retrieves the instances of the current title extension (if any)

# and the toolbar item URL
urls = self.get_title_extension_admin()
# we now also need to get the titleset (i.e. different language titles)
# for this page
page = self._get_page()
titleset = page.title_set.filter(language__in=get_language_list(page.site_
˓→ id))
# create a 3-tuple of (title_extension, url, title)

nodes = [(title_extension, url, title.title) for (
(title_extension, url), title) in zip(urls, titleset)
]
# cycle through the list of nodes

for title_extension, url, title in nodes:
# adds toolbar items

sub_menu.add_modal_item(
'Rate %s' % title, url=url, disabled=not self.toolbar.edit_mode_
˓→ active
)
Using extensions
In templates
To access a page extension in page templates you can simply access the appropriate related_name field that is now
available on the Page object.
Page extensions
As per the normal related_name naming mechanism, the appropriate field to access is the same as your
PageExtension model name, but lowercased. Assuming your Page Extension model class is IconExtension,

the relationship to the page extension model will be available on page.iconextension. From there you can
access the extra fields you defined in your extension, so you can use something like:
{% load staticfiles %}
{# rest of template omitted ... #}
{% if request.current_page.iconextension %}
<img src="{% static request.current_page.iconextension.image.url %}">
{% endif %}
where request.current_page is the normal way to access the current page that is rendering the template.
It is important to remember that unless the operator has already assigned a page extension to every page, a page may
not have the iconextension relationship available, hence the use of the {% if ... %}...{% endif %}
above.
Title extensions
In order to retrieve a title extension within a template, get the Title object using request.current_page.
get_title_obj. Using the example above, we could use:
{{ request.current_page.get_title_obj.ratingextension.rating }}
With menus
Like most other Page attributes, extensions are not represented in the menu NavigationNodes, and therefore menu
templates will not have access to them by default.
In order to make the extension accessible, you’ll need to create a menu modifier (see the example provided) that does
this.
Each page extension instance has a one-to-one relationship with its page. Get the extension by using the reverse rela-
tion, along the lines of extension = page.yourextensionlowercased, and place this attribute of page
on the node - as (for example) node.extension.
In the menu template the icon extension we created above would therefore be available as child.extension.
icon.
Handling relations
If your PageExtension or TitleExtension includes a ForeignKey from another model or includes a Many-
ToManyField, you should also override the method copy_relations(self, oldinstance, language)
so that these fields are copied appropriately when the CMS makes a copy of your extension to support versioning, etc.
Here’s an example that uses a ManyToManyField

from cms.extensions import PageExtension
class MyPageExtension(PageExtension):


page_categories = models.ManyToManyField(Category, blank=True)
def copy_relations(self, oldinstance, language):

for page_category in oldinstance.page_categories.all():
page_category.pk = None
page_category.mypageextension = self
page_category.save()
extension_pool.register(MyPageExtension)
Complete toolbar API
The example above uses the Simplified Toolbar API.

If you need complete control over the layout of your extension toolbar items you can still use the low-level API to edit
the toolbar according to your needs:
from cms.api import get_page_draft

from cms.utils import get_cms_setting
from cms.utils.page_permissions import user_can_change_page
from django.urls import reverse, NoReverseMatch
class IconExtensionToolbar(CMSToolbar):
def populate(self):
# always use draft if we have a page
self.page = get_page_draft(self.request.current_page)
if not self.page:
# Nothing to do
return
if user_can_change_page(user=self.request.user, page=self.page):
try:
icon_extension = IconExtension.objects.get(extended_object_id=self.
˓→page.id)
except IconExtension.DoesNotExist:
icon_extension = None
try:
if icon_extension:
url = reverse('admin:myapp_iconextension_change', args=(icon_
˓→extension.pk,))
else:
url = reverse('admin:myapp_iconextension_add') + '?extended_
˓→object=%s' % self.page.pk
except NoReverseMatch:
# not in urls
pass
else:
not_edit_mode = not self.toolbar.edit_mode_active


current_page_menu = self.toolbar.get_or_create_menu('page')
current_page_menu.add_modal_item(_('Page Icon'), url=url,
˓→disabled=not_edit_mode)
Now when the operator invokes “Edit this page. . . ” from the toolbar, there will be an additional menu item Page
Icon ... (in this case), which can be used to open a modal dialog where the operator can affect the new icon
field.
Note that when the extension is saved, the corresponding page is marked as having unpublished changes. To see the
new extension values publish the page.
Simplified Toolbar API
The simplified Toolbar API works by deriving your toolbar class from ExtensionToolbar which provides the
following API:
• cms.extensions.toolbar.ExtensionToolbar._setup_extension_toolbar(): this must
be called first to setup the environment and do the permission checking;
• get_page_extension_admin(): for page extensions, retrieves the correct admin URL for the related
toolbar item; returns the extension instance (or None if not exists) and the admin URL for the toolbar item;
• get_title_extension_admin(): for title extensions, retrieves the correct admin URL for the related
toolbar item; returns a list of the extension instances (or None if not exists) and the admin urls for each title of
the current page;
• cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar.get_or_create_menu()
• cms.extensions.toolbar.ExtensionToolbar._setup_extension_toolbar()
How to test your extensions
Testing Apps
Resolving View Names
Your apps need testing, but in your live site they aren’t in urls.py as they are attached to a CMS page. So if you
want to be able to use reverse() in your tests, or test templates that use the url template tag, you need to hook up
your app to a special test version of urls.py and tell your tests to use that.
So you could create myapp/tests/urls.py with the following code:

from django.conf.urls import url, include
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^myapp/', include('myapp.urls')),
url(r'', include('cms.urls')),
]
And then in your tests you can plug this in with the override_settings() decorator:

from django.test.utils import override_settings

from cms.test_utils.testcases import CMSTestCase
class MyappTests(CMSTestCase):
@override_settings(ROOT_URLCONF='myapp.tests.urls')
def test_myapp_page(self):
test_url = reverse('myapp_view_name')
# rest of test as normal
If you want to the test url conf throughout your test class, then you can use apply the decorator to the whole class:
from django.test.utils import override_settings
from cms.test_utils.testcases import CMSTestCase
@override_settings(ROOT_URLCONF='myapp.tests.urls')
class MyappTests(CMSTestCase):
def test_myapp_page(self):
test_url = reverse('myapp_view_name')
# rest of test as normal
CMSTestCase
Django CMS includes CMSTestCase which has various utility methods that might be useful for testing your CMS
app and manipulating CMS pages.
Testing Plugins
To test plugins, you need to assign them to a placeholder. Depending on at what level you want to test your plugin,
you can either check the HTML generated by it or the context provided to its template:
from django.test import TestCase
from django.test.client import RequestFactory
from cms.api import add_plugin

from cms.models import Placeholder
from cms.plugin_rendering import ContentRenderer
from myapp.cms_plugins import MyPlugin

from myapp.models import MyappPlugin
class MypluginTests(TestCase):
def test_plugin_context(self):
placeholder = Placeholder.objects.create(slot='test')
model_instance = add_plugin(
placeholder,
MyPlugin,
'en',
)
plugin_instance = model_instance.get_plugin_class_instance()
context = plugin_instance.render({}, model_instance, None)
self.assertIn('key', context)
self.assertEqual(context['key'], 'value')

def test_plugin_html(self):
placeholder = Placeholder.objects.create(slot='test')
model_instance = add_plugin(
placeholder,
MyPlugin,
'en',
)
renderer = ContentRenderer(request=RequestFactory())
html = renderer.render_plugin(model_instance, {})
self.assertEqual(html, '<strong>Test</strong>')
Contributing
How to contribute a patch
Note: For more background on the material covered in this how-to section, see the Contributing code and Running
and writing tests sections of the documentation.
django CMS is an open project, and welcomes the participation of anyone who would like to contribute, whatever their
any level of knowledge.
As well as code, we welcome contributions to django CMS’s documentation and translations.
Note: Feel free to dive into coding for django CMS in whichever way suits you. However, you need to be aware
of the guidelines and policies for django CMS project development. Adhering to them will make much easier for the
core developers to validate and accept your contribution.
The basics
The basic workflow for a code contribution will typically run as follows:
1. Fork the django CMS project GitHub repository to your own GitHub account
2. Clone your fork locally:
git clone git@github.com:YOUR_USERNAME/django-cms.git
3. Create a virtualenv:
virtualenv cms-develop
source cms-develop/bin/activate
4. Install its dependencies:
cd django-cms
pip install -r test_requirements/django-X.Y.txt
Replace X.Y with whichever version of Django you want to work with.
5. Create a new branch for your work:

git checkout -b my_fix
6. Edit the django CMS codebase to implement the fix or feature.

7. Run the test suite:
python manage.py test
8. Commit and push your code:
git commit
git push origin my_fix
9. Open a pull request on GitHub.
Target branches
See Branches for information about branch policy.
How to write a test
The django CMS test suite contains a mix of unit tests, functional tests, regression tests and integration tests.
Depending on your contribution, you will write a mix of them.
Let’s start with something simple. We’ll assume you have set up your environment correctly as described above.
Let’s say you want to test the behaviour of the CMSPluginBase.render method:
class CMSPluginBase(six.with_metaclass(CMSPluginBaseMetaclass, admin.ModelAdmin)):
...

context['instance'] = instance
context['placeholder'] = placeholder
return context
Writing a unit test for it will require us to test whether the returned context object contains the declared attributes
with the correct values.
We will start with a new class in an existing django CMS test module (cms.tests.plugins in this case):
class SimplePluginTestCase(CMSTestCase):
pass
Let’s try to run it:
python manage.py test cms.tests.test_plugins.SimplePluginTestCase
This will call the new test case class only and it’s handy when creating new tests and iterating quickly through the
steps. A full test run (python manage.py test) is required before opening a pull request.
This is the output you’ll get:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 0 tests in 0.000s
OK
Which is correct as we have no test in our test case. Let’s add an empty one:
def test_render_method(self):
pass
Running the test command again will return a slightly different output:

.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s
OK
This looks better, but it’s not that meaningful as we’re not testing anything.
Write a real test:
def test_render_method(self):
"""
Tests the CMSPluginBase.render method by checking that the appropriate
˓→variables
are set in the returned context

"""
from cms.api import create_page
my_page = create_page('home', language='en', template='col_two.html')
placeholder = my_page.placeholders.get(slot='col_left')
context = self.get_context('/', page=my_page)
plugin = CMSPluginBase()
new_context = plugin.render(context, None, placeholder)

self.assertTrue('placeholder' in new_context)
self.assertEqual(placeholder, context['placeholder'])
self.assertTrue('instance' in new_context)
self.assertIsNone(new_context['instance'])
and run it:

.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.044s
OK
The output is quite similar to the previous run, but the longer execution time gives us a hint that this test is actually
doing something.

Let’s quickly check the test code.

To test CMSPluginBase.render method we need a RequestContext instance and a placeholder. As
CMSPluginBase does not have any configuration model, the instance argument can be None.
1. Create a page instance to get the placeholder
2. Get the placeholder by filtering the placeholders of the page instance on the expected placeholder name
3. Create a context instance by using the provided super class method
4. Call the render method on a CMSPluginBase instance; being stateless, it’s easy to call render of a bare
instance of the CMSPluginBase class, which helps in tests
5. Assert a few things the method must provide on the returned context instance
As you see, even a simple test like this assumes and uses many feature of the test utilities provided by django CMS.
Before attempting to write a test, take your time to explore the content of cms.test_utils package and check
the shipped templates, example applications and, most of all, the base testcases defined in cms.test_utils.
testscases which provide a lot of useful methods to prepare the environment for our tests or to create useful test
data.
Submitting your code
After the code and the tests are ready and packed in commits, you must submit it for review and merge in the django
CMS GitHub project.
As noted above, always create a new branch for your code, be it a fix or a new feature, before committing changes,
then create your pull request from your branch to the target branch on django CMS.
Acceptance criteria
Matching these criteria from the very beginning will help the core developers to be able to review your submission
more quickly and efficiently and will increase the chances of making a successful pull request.
Please see our Development policies for guidance on which branches to use, how to prepare pull requests and so on.
Features
To be accepted, proposed features should have at least:

• natural language documentation in the docs folder describing the feature, its usage and potentially backward
incompatibilities.
• inline documentation (comments and docstrings) in the critical areas of the code explaining the behaviour
• appropriate test coverage
• Python 2/3 compatibility
• South and Django migrations (where applicable)
The pull request description must briefly describe the feature and the intended goal and benefits.

Bugs
To be accepted, proposed bug fixes should have at least:

• inline documentation (comments and docstrings) in the critical areas of the code explaining the behaviour
• at least 1 regression test that demonstrates the issue and the fix
• Python 2/3 compatibility
• South and Django migrations (where applicable)
The pull request description must briefly describe the bug and the steps for its solution; in case the bug has been opened
elsewhere, it must be linked in the pull request description, describing the fix.
4.1.3 Key topics
This section explains and analyses some key concepts in django CMS. It’s less concerned with explaining how to do
things than with helping you understand how it works.
Application hooks (“apphooks”)
An Application Hook, usually simply referred to as an apphook, is a way of attaching the functionality of some other
application to a django CMS page. It’s a convenient way of integrating other applications into a django CMS site.
For example, suppose you have an application that maintains and publishes information about Olympic records. You
could add this application to your site’s urls.py (before the django CMS URLs pattern), so that users will find it at
/records.
However, although it would thus be integrated into your project, it would not be fully integrated into django CMS, for
example:
• django CMS would not be aware of it, and - for example - would allow your users to create a CMS page with
the same /records slug, that could never be reached.
• The application’s pages won’t automatically appear in your site’s menus.
• The application’s pages won’t be able to take advantage of the CMS’s publishing workflow, permissions or other
functionality.
Apphooks offer a more complete way of integrating other applications, by attaching them to a CMS page. In this case,
the attached application takes over the page and its URL (and all the URLs below it, such as /records/1984).
The application can be served at a URL defined by the content managers, and easily moved around in the site structure.
The Advanced settings of a CMS page provides an Application field. Adding an apphook class to the application will
allow it to be selected in this field.
Multiple apphooks per application
It’s possible for an application to be added multiple times, to different pages. See Attaching an application multiple
times for more.
Also possible to provide multiple apphook configurations:

Apphook configurations
You may require the same application to behave differently in different locations on your site. For example, the
Olympic Records application may be required to publish athletics results at one location, but cycling results at another,
and so on.
An apphook configuration class allows the site editors to create multiple configuration instances that specify the
behaviour. The kind of configuration available is presented in an admin form, and determined by the application
developer.
Important: It’s important to understand that an apphook (and therefore also an apphook configuration) serves no
function until it is attached to a page - and until the page is published, the application will be unable to fulfil any
publishing function.
Also note that the apphook “swallows” all URLs below that of the page, handing them over to the attached application.
If you have any child pages of the apphooked page, django CMS will not be able to serve them reliably.
Publishing
Each published page in the CMS exists in as two cms.Page instances: public and draft.
Until it’s published, only the draft version exists.
The staff users generally use the draft version to edit content and change settings for the pages. None of these changes
are visible on the public site until the page is published.
When a page is published, the page must also have all parent pages published in order to become available on the web
site. If a parent page is not yet published, the page goes into a “pending” state. It will be automatically published once
the parent page is published.
This enables you to edit an entire subsection of the website, publishing it only once all the work is complete.
Code and Pages
When handling cms.Page in code, you’ll generally want to deal with draft instances.
Draft pages are the ones you interact with in the admin, and in draft mode in the CMS frontend. When a draft page is
published, a public version is created and all titles, placeholders and plugins are copied to the public version.
The cms.Page model has a publisher_is_draft field, that’s True for draft versions. Use a filter:
``publisher_is_draft=True``
to get hold of these draft Page instances.
Serving content in multiple languages
Basic concepts
django CMS has a sophisticated multilingual capability. It is able to serve content in multiple languages, with fallbacks
into other languages where translations have not been provided. It also has the facility for the user to set the preferred
language and so on.

How django CMS determines the user’s preferred language
django CMS determines the user’s language the same way Django does it.
• the language code prefix in the URL
• the language set in the session
• the language in the language cookie
• the language that the browser says its user prefers
It uses the django built in capabilities for this.
By default no session and cookie are set. If you want to enable this use the
cms.middleware.language.LanguageCookieMiddleware to set the cookie on every request.
How django CMS determines what language to serve
Once it has identified a user’s language, it will try to accommodate it using the languages set in CMS_LANGUAGES.
If fallbacks is set, and if the user’s preferred language is not available for that content, it will use the fallbacks
specified for the language in CMS_LANGUAGES.
What django CMS shows in your menus
If hide_untranslated is True (the default) then pages that aren’t translated into the desired language will not
appear in the menu.
Internationalisation
django CMS excels in its multilingual support, and can be configured to handle a vast range of different requirements.
Its behaviour is flexible and can be controlled at a granular level in CMS_LANGUAGES. Other Internationalisation
and localisation (I18N and L10N) settings offer further control.
See How to serve multiple languages on how to set up a multilingual django CMS project.
URLs
Multilingual URLs require the use of i18n_patterns(). For more information about this see the official Django
documentation on the subject. Multilingual URLs describes what you need to do in a django CMS project.
How django CMS determines which language to serve
django CMS uses a number of standard Django mechanisms to choose the language for the user, in the following order
of preference:
• language code in the URL - for example, http://example.com/de (when multilingual URLs are enabled)
• language stored in the browsing session
• language stored in a cookie from a previous session
• language requested by the browser in the Accept-Language header

• the default LANGUAGE_CODE in the site’s settings

More in-depth documentation about this is available at https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/i18n/translation/
#how-django-discovers-language-preference
Permissions
The django CMS permissions system is flexible, granular and multi-layered - it can however also sometimes seem a
little confusing!
It’s important to understand its parts and how they interact in order to use it effectively.
In django CMS permissions can be granted:
• that determine what actions a user may perform
• that determine on which parts of the site they may perform them
These two dimensions of permissions are independent of each other. See Permission strategies below.
CMS_PERMISSION mode
The first thing to understand is that as far as permissions are concerned django CMS operates in one of two modes,
depending on the CMS_PERMISSION setting:
• False (the default): only the standard Django Users and Groups permissions will apply
• True: as well as standard Django permissions, django CMS applies a layer of permissions control affecting
pages
CMS_PERMISSION mode off
When django CMS’s own permission system is disabled, you have no control over permissions over particular pages.
In other words, row-level controls on pages do not exist.
You still have control over what functionality particular users and groups have in the CMS, but not over which
content they can exercise it on.
Key user permissions
You can find the permissions you can set for a user or groups in the Django admin, in the Authentication and Autho-
rization section.
Filtering by cms will show the ones that belong to the CMS application. Permissions that a CMS editor will need are
likely to include:
• cms | cms plugin
• cms | page
• cms | placeholder
• cms | placeholder reference
• cms | static placeholder
• cms | placeholder reference
• cms | title

Most of these offer the usual add/change/delete options, though there are some exceptions, such as cms |
placeholder | Can use Structure mode.
Users with permission to do something to a CMS model will be able to do it to all instances of that model when
CMS_PERMISSION mode is off
CMS_PERMISSION mode on
When django CMS’s permission system is enabled, a new layer of permissions is added, and permissions over CMS
page-related models will need to be provided in addition to those granted in Django’s Authentication and Authoriza-
tion models.
In other words, both Django’s and django CMS’s permissions will need to be granted over pages if an editor is to have
access to them.
By default, when CMS_PERMISSION mode is enabled, users will not be able to edit CMS pages unless they are
Django superusers. This is rarely desirable, so you will probably wish to configure the CMS permissions to provide
more nuanced control.
See Page permissions below for more.
New admin models
When CMS_PERMISSION is enabled, you’ll find three new models available in the admin:
• Pages global permissions
• User groups (page)
• Users (page)
You will find that the latter two simply reflect the Django Groups and User permissions that already exist in the system.
They are a simpler representation of the available permissions, specific to page editing. You’ll often find it more useful
to use the Django Groups and User permissions.
Pages global permissions are described below.
Page permissions
When CMS_PERMISSION is enabled, unless you simply make your users superusers, you’ll need to give each one
either global permission, or permission over specific pages (preferably via their membership of a group in either case).
Both global and specific permission granting are described below.
Global page permissions
Pages global permissions are available in the admin, in the django CMS section.
The first two options for a global permission concern whom they apply to.
Then there is list of what actions the editor can perform. The editors will need at least some of these if they are to
manage pages.
Finally, there’s a list of the sites they can perform the actions on.

Page-specific permissions
The CMS permissions system also provides permissions control for particular pages or hierarchies of pages in the site
- row-level permissions, in other words.
These are controlled by selecting Permissions from the Page menu in the toolbar when on the page (this options is
only available when CMS_PERMISSION mode is on).
Login required determines whether anonymous visitors will be able to see the page at all.
Menu visibility determines who’ll be able to see the page in navigation menus - everyone, or logged in or anonymous
users only.
View restrictions determine which groups and users will be able to see the page. Adding a view restriction will allow
you to set this. Note that this doesn’t apply new restrictions to users who are also editors with appropriate permissions.
Page permissions determine what editors can do to a page (or hierarchy of pages). They work just like the Pages global
permissions described above, but don’t apply globally. They are added to global permissions - they don’t override
them.
The Can change permission refers to whether the user can change the permissions of a “subordinate” users Bob is the
subordinate of Alice if one of:
• Bob was created by Alice
• Bob has at least one page permission set on one of the pages on which Alice has the Can change permissions
right
Even though a user may have permissions to change a page, that doesn’t give them permissions to add or
change plugins within that page. In order to be able to add/change/delete plugins on any page, you will
need to go through the standard Django permissions to provide users with the actions they can perform.
Even if a page permission allows a user to edit pages in general (global) or a particular page (specific),
they will still need cms | page | Can publish page permission to publish it, cms | cms
plugins | Can edit cms plugin to edit plugins on the page, and so on.
This is because the page permissions system is an additional layer over the Django permissions system.
Permission strategies
For a simple site with only a few users you may not need to be concerned about this, but with thousands of pages
belonging to different departments and users with greatly differing levels of authority and expertise, it is important to
understand who is able to do what on your site.
Two dimensions of permissions
As noted earlier, it’s useful to think of your users’ permissions across two dimensions:
• what sort of things this user or group of user should be allowed to do (e.g. publish pages, add new plugins,
create new users, etc)
• which sections of the site the user should be allowed to do them on (the home page, a limited set of departmental
pages, etc)

Use permissions on Groups, not on Users
Avoid applying permissions to individual users unless strictly necessary. It’s far better to apply them to Groups, and
add Users to Groups. Otherwise, you risk ending up with large numbers of Users with unknown or inappropriate
permissions.
Use Groups to build up permissions
Different users may require different subsets of permissions. For example, you could define a Basic content editor
group, who can edit and publish pages and content, but who don’t have permission to create new ones; that permission
would be granted to a Lead content editor Group. Another Group could have permissions to use the weblog.
Some users should be allowed to edit some pages but not others. So, you could create a Pharmacy department and a
Neurology department group, which don’t actually have any permissions of their own, but give each one Page-specific
permissions on the appropriate landing page of the website.
Then, when managing a user, place the user into the appropriate groups.
Global or specific page permissions?
In a simple site, if you have CMS_PERMISSION enabled, add a global permission so that all editors can edit all pages.
If you need more control, only allow select users access to the global permission, but add specific page permissions to
pages as appropriate for the other editors.
Using touch-screen devices with django CMS
Important: These notes about touch interface support apply only to the django CMS admin and editing interfaces.
The visitor-facing published site is wholly independent of this, and the responsibility of the site developer.
General
django CMS has made extensive use of double-click functionality, which lacks an exact equivalent in touch-screen
interfaces. The touch interface will interpret taps and touches in an intelligent way.
Depending on the context, a tap will be interpreted to mean open for editing (that is, the equivalent of a double-click),
or to mean select (the equivalent of a single click), according to what makes sense in that context.
Similarly, in some contexts similar interactions may drag objects, or may scroll them, depending on what makes most
sense. Sometimes, the two behaviours will be present in the same view, for example in the page list, where certain
areas are draggable (for page re-ordering) while other parts of the page can be used for scrolling.
In general, the chosen behaviour is reasonable for a particular object, context or portion of the screen, and in practice
is quicker and easier to apprehend simply by using it than it is to explain.
Pop-up help text will refer to clicking or tapping depending on the device being used.
Be aware that some hover-related user hints are simply not available to touch interface users. For example, the overlay
(formerly, the sideframe) can be adjusted for width by dragging its edge, but this is not indicated in a touch-screen
interface.

Device support
Smaller devices such as most phones are too small to be adequately usable. For example, your Apple Watch is sadly
unlikely to provide a very good django CMS editing experience.
Older devices will often lack the performance to support a usefully responsive frontend editing/administration inter-
face.
The following devices are known to work well, so newer devices and more powerful models should also be suitable:
• iOS: Apple iPad Air 1, Mini 4
• Android: Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4
• Windows 10: Microsoft Surface
We welcome feedback about specific devices.
Your site’s frontend
django CMS’s toolbar and frontend editing architecture rely on good practices in your own frontend code. To work well
with django CMS’s responsive management framework, your own site should be friendly towards multiple devices.
Whether you use your own frontend code or a framework such as Bootstrap 3 or Foundation, be aware that problems
in your CSS or markup can affect django CMS editing modes, and this will become especially apparent to users of
mobile/hand-held devices.
Known issues
General issues
• Editing links that lack sufficient padding is currently difficult or impossible using touch-screens.
• Similarly, other areas of a page where the visible content is composed entirely of links with minimal padding
around them can be difficult or impossible to open for editing by tapping. This can affect the navigation menu
(double-clicking on the navigation menu opens the page list).
• Adding links is known to be problematic on some Android devices, because of the behaviour of the keyboard.
• On some devices, managing django CMS in the browser’s private (also known as incognito) mode can have
significant performance implications.
This is because local storage is not available in this mode, and user state must be stored in a Django session,
which is much less efficient.
This is an unusual use case, and should not affect many users.
CKEditor issues
• Scrolling on narrow devices, especially when opening the keyboard inside the CKEditor, does not always work
ideally - sometimes the keyboard can appear in the wrong place on-screen.
• Sometimes the CKEditor moves unexpectedly on-screen in use.
• Sometimes in Safari on iOS devices, a rendering bug will apparently truncate or reposition portions of the
toolbar when the CKEditor is opened - even though sections may appear to missing or moved, they can still be
activated by touching the part of the screen where they should have been found.

Django Admin issues
• In the page tree, the first touch on the page opens the keyboard which may be undesirable. This happens because
Django automatically focuses the search form input.
How the menu system works
Basic concepts
Soft Roots
A soft root is a page that acts as the root for a menu navigation tree.
Typically, this will be a page that is the root of a significant new section on your site.
When the soft root feature is enabled, the navigation menu for any page will start at the nearest soft root, rather than at
the real root of the site’s page hierarchy.
This feature is useful when your site has deep page hierarchies (and therefore multiple levels in its navigation trees).
In such a case, you usually don’t want to present site visitors with deep menus of nested items.
For example, you’re on the page “Introduction to Bleeding”, so the menu might look like this:
School of Medicine
Medical Education
Departments
Department of Lorem Ipsum
Department of Donec Imperdiet
Department of Cras Eros
Department of Mediaeval Surgery
Theory
Cures
Bleeding
* Introduction to Bleeding <current page>
Bleeding - the scientific evidence
Cleaning up the mess
Cupping
Leaches
Maggots
Techniques
Instruments
Department of Curabitur a Purus
Department of Sed Accumsan
Department of Etiam
Research
Administration
Contact us
Impressum
which is frankly overwhelming.

By making “Department of Mediaeval Surgery” a soft root, the menu becomes much more manageable:
Department of Mediaeval Surgery
Theory
Cures
Bleeding


* Introduction to Bleeding <current page>
Bleeding - the scientific evidence
Cleaning up the mess
Cupping
Leaches
Maggots
Techniques
Instruments
Registration
The menu system isn’t monolithic. Rather, it is composed of numerous active parts, many of which can operate
independently of each other.
What they operate on is a list of menu nodes, that gets passed around the menu system, until it emerges at the other
end.
The main active parts of the menu system are menu generators and modifiers.
Some of these parts are supplied with the menus application. Some come from other applications (from the cms
application in django CMS, for example, or some other application entirely).
All these active parts need to be registered within the menu system.
Then, when the time comes to build a menu, the system will ask all the registered menu generators and modifiers to
get to work on it.
Generators and Modifiers
Menu generators and modifiers are classes.
Generators
To add nodes to a menu a generator is required.

There is one in cms for example, which examines the Pages in the database and adds them as nodes.
These classes are sub-classes of menus.base.Menu. The one in cms is cms.menu.CMSMenu.
In order to use a generator, its get_nodes() method must be called.
Modifiers
A modifier examines the nodes that have been assembled, and modifies them according to its requirements (adding or
removing them, or manipulating their attributes, as it sees fit).
An important one in cms (cms.menu.SoftRootCutter) removes the nodes that are no longer required when a
soft root is encountered.
These classes are sub-classes of menus.base.Modifier. Examples are cms.menu.NavExtender and cms.
menu.SoftRootCutter.
In order to use a modifier, its modify() method must be called.
Note that each Modifier’s modify() method can be called twice, before and after the menu has been trimmed.

For example when using the {% show_menu %} template tag, it’s called:
• first, by menus.menu_pool.MenuPool.get_nodes(), with the argument post_cut = False
• later, by the template tag, with the argument post_cut = True
This corresponds to the state of the nodes list before and after menus.templatetags.menu_tags.
cut_levels(), which removes nodes from the menu according to the arguments provided by the template tag.
This is because some modification might be required on all nodes, and some might only be required on the subset of
nodes left after cutting.
Nodes
Nodes are assembled in a tree. Each node is an instance of the menus.base.NavigationNode class.
A NavigationNode has attributes such as URL, title, parent and children - as one would expect in a navigation tree.
It also has an attr attribute, a dictionary that’s provided for you to add arbitrary attributes to, rather than placing
them directly on the node itself, where they might clash with something.
Warning: You can’t assume that a menus.base.NavigationNode represents a django CMS Page. Firstly,
some nodes may represent objects from other applications. Secondly, you can’t expect to be able to access Page
objects via NavigationNodes. To check if node represents a CMS Page, check for is_page in menus.base.
NavigationNode.attr and that it is True.
Menu system logic
Let’s look at an example using the {% show_menu %} template tag. It will be different for other template tags, and
your applications might have their own menu classes. But this should help explain what’s going on and what the menu
system is doing.
One thing to understand is that the system passes around a list of nodes, doing various things to it.
Many of the methods below pass this list of nodes to the ones it calls, and return them to the ones that they were in
turn called by.
Don’t forget that show_menu recurses - so it will do all of the below for each level in the menu.
• {% show_menu %} - the template tag in the template
– menus.templatetags.menu_tags.ShowMenu.get_context()
* menus.menu_pool.MenuPool.get_nodes()
· menus.menu_pool.MenuPool.discover_menus() checks every application’s cms_menus.py
Menu classes, placing them in the self.menus dict

Modifier classes, placing them in the self.modifiers list
· menus.menu_pool.MenuPool._build_nodes()
checks the cache to see if it should return cached nodes
loops over the Menus in self.menus (note: by default the only generator is cms.menu.CMSMenu); fo
call its menus.base.Menu.get_nodes() - the menu generator

menus.menu_pool._build_nodes_inner_for_one_menu()
adds all nodes into a big list
· menus.menu_pool.MenuPool.apply_modifiers()
menus.menu_pool.MenuPool._mark_selected()
loops over each node, comparing its URL with the request.path_info, and marks the best
match as selected
loops over the Modifiers in self.modifiers calling each one’s modify() with post_cut=Fals
cms.menu.NavExtender
cms.menu.SoftRootCutter removes all nodes below the appropriate soft
root
menus.modifiers.Marker loops over all nodes; finds selected, marks its an-
cestors, siblings and children
menus.modifiers.AuthVisibility removes nodes that require authorisa-
tion to see
menus.modifiers.Level loops over all nodes; for each one that is a root node (level ==
mark_levels() recurses over a node’s descendants marking their levels
* we’re now back in menus.templatetags.menu_tags.ShowMenu.

get_context() again
* if we have been provided a root_id, get rid of any nodes other than its descendants
* menus.templatetags.menu_tags.cut_levels() removes nodes from the menu
according to the arguments provided by the template tag
* menus.menu_pool.MenuPool.apply_modifiers() with post_cut = True loops over all the M
· cms.menu.NavExtender
· cms.menu.SoftRootCutter
· menus.modifiers.Marker
· menus.modifiers.AuthVisibility
· menus.modifiers.Level:
menus.modifiers.Level.mark_levels()
* return the nodes to the context in the variable children
Some commonly-used plugins
Warning: In version 3 of the CMS we removed all the plugins from the main repository into separate repositories
to continue their development there. you are upgrading from a previous version. Please refer to Upgrading from
previous versions

Please note that dozens if not hundreds of different django CMS plugins have been made available under open-source
licences. Some, like the ones on this page, are likely to be of general interest, while others are highly specialised.
This page only lists those that fall under the responsibility of the django CMS project. Please see the Django Packages
site for some more, or just do a web search for the functionality you seek - you’ll be surprised at the range of plugins
that has been created.
django CMS Core Addons
We maintain a set of Core Addons for django CMS.

You don’t need to use them, and for many of them alternatives exist, but they represent a good way to get started with
a reliable project set-up. We recommend them for new users of django CMS in particular. For example, if you start a
project on Divio Cloud or using the django CMS installer, this is the set of addons you’ll have installed by default.
The django CMS Core Addons are:
• Django Filer - a file management application for images and other documents.
• django CMS Admin Style - a CSS theme for the Django admin
• django CMS Text CKEditor - our default rich text WYSIYG editor
• django CMS Link - add links to content
• django CMS Picture - add images to your site (Filer-compatible)
• django CMS File - add files or an entire folder to your pages (Filer-compatible)
• django CMS Style - create HTML containers with classes, styles, ids and other attributes
• django CMS Snippet - insert arbitrary HTML content
• django CMS Audio - publish audio files (Filer-compatible)
• django CMS Video - embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo and other services, or use uploaded videos (Filer-
compatible)
• django CMS GoogleMap - displays a map of an address on your page. Supports addresses and co-ordinates.
Zoom level and route planner options can also be set.
We welcome feedback, documentation, patches and any other help to maintain and improve these valuable compo-
nents.
Other addons of note
These packages are no longer officially guaranteed support by the django CMS project, but they have good community
support.
• django CMS Inherit - renders the plugins from a specified page (and language) in its place
• django CMS Column - layout page content in columns
• django CMS Teaser - displays a teaser box for another page or a URL, complete with picture and a description
Deprecated addons
Some older plugins that you may have encountered are now deprecated and we advise against incorporating them into
new projects.
These are:

• cmsplugin-filer
• Aldryn Style
• Aldryn Locations
• Aldryn Snippet
Search and django CMS
For powerful full-text search within the django CMS, we suggest using Haystack together with aldryn-search.
Frontend integration
Generally speaking, django CMS is wholly frontend-agnostic. It doesn’t care what your site’s frontend is built on or
uses.
The exception to this is when editing your site, as the django CMS toolbar and editing controls use their own frontend
code, and this can sometimes affect or be affected by your site’s code.
The content reloading introduced in django CMS 3.5 for plugin operations (when moving/adding/deleting etc) pull
markup changes from the server. This may require a JS widget to be reinitialised, or additional CSS to be loaded,
depending on your own frontend set-up.
For example, if using Less.js, you may notice that content loads without expected CSS after plugin saves.
In such a case, you can use the cms-content-refresh event to take care of that, by adding something like:
{% if request.toolbar and request.toolbar.edit_mode_active %}

<script>
CMS.$(window).on('cms-content-refresh', function () {
less.refresh();
});
</script>
{% endif %}
after the toolbar JavaScript.
4.1.4 Reference
Technical reference material.
API References
cms.api
Python APIs for creating CMS content. This is done in cms.api and not on the models and managers, because
the direct API via models and managers is slightly counterintuitive for developers. Also the functions defined in this
module do sanity checks on arguments.
Warning: None of the functions in this module does any security or permission checks. They verify their input
values to be sane wherever possible, however permission checks should be implemented manually before calling
any of these functions.

Warning: Due to potential circular dependency issues, it’s recommended to import the api in the functions that
uses its function.
e.g. use:
def my_function():
from cms.api import api_function
api_function(...)
instead of:
from cms.api import api_function
def my_function():
api_function(...)
Functions and constants
cms.api.VISIBILITY_ALL
Used for the limit_visibility_in_menu keyword argument to create_page(). Does not limit
menu visibility.
cms.api.VISIBILITY_USERS
Used for the limit_visibility_in_menu keyword argument to create_page(). Limits menu visi-
bility to authenticated users.
cms.api.VISIBILITY_ANONYMOUS
Used for the limit_visibility_in_menu keyword argument to create_page(). Limits menu visi-
bility to anonymous (not authenticated) users.
cms.api.create_page(title, template, language, menu_title=None, slug=None, ap-
phook=None, apphook_namespace=None, redirect=None,
meta_description=None, created_by=’python-api’, par-
ent=None, publication_date=None, publication_end_date=None,
in_navigation=False, soft_root=False, reverse_id=None, naviga-
tion_extenders=None, published=False, site=None, login_required=False,
limit_visibility_in_menu=VISIBILITY_ALL, position="last-child", over-
write_url=None, xframe_options=Page.X_FRAME_OPTIONS_INHERIT)
Creates a cms.models.Page instance and returns it. Also creates a cms.models.Title instance for the
specified language.
Parameters
• title (str) – Title of the page
• template (str) – Template to use for this page. Must be in CMS_TEMPLATES
• language (str) – Language code for this page. Must be in LANGUAGES
• menu_title (str) – Menu title for this page
• slug (str) – Slug for the page, by default uses a slugified version of title
• apphook (str or cms.app_base.CMSApp sub-class) – Application to hook on this
page, must be a valid apphook
• apphook_namespace (str) – Name of the apphook namespace
• redirect (str) – URL redirect
• meta_description (str) – Description of this page for SEO
• created_by (str of django.contrib.auth.models.User instance) – User
that is creating this page
• parent (cms.models.Page instance) – Parent page of this page

• publication_date (datetime) – Date to publish this page

• publication_end_date (datetime) – Date to unpublish this page
• in_navigation (bool) – Whether this page should be in the navigation or not
• soft_root (bool) – Whether this page is a soft root or not
• reverse_id (str) – Reverse ID of this page (for template tags)
• navigation_extenders (str) – Menu to attach to this page. Must be a valid
menu
• published (bool) – Whether this page should be published or not
• site (django.contrib.sites.models.Site instance) – Site to put this
page on
• login_required (bool) – Whether users must be logged in or not to view this
page
• limit_visibility_in_menu (VISIBILITY_ALL or VISIBILITY_USERS
or VISIBILITY_ANONYMOUS) – Limits visibility of this page in the menu
• position (str) – Where to insert this node if parent is given, must be
'first-child' or 'last-child'
• overwrite_url (str) – Overwritten path for this page
• xframe_options (int) – X Frame Option value for Clickjacking protection
• page_title (str) – Overriden page title for html title tag
cms.api.create_title(language, title, page, menu_title=None, slug=None, redirect=None,
meta_description=None, parent=None, overwrite_url=None)
Creates a cms.models.Title instance and returns it.
Parameters
• language (str) – Language code for this page. Must be in LANGUAGES
• title (str) – Title of the page
• page (cms.models.Page instance) – The page for which to create this title
• menu_title (str) – Menu title for this page
• slug (str) – Slug for the page, by default uses a slugified version of title
• redirect (str) – URL redirect
• meta_description (str) – Description of this page for SEO
• parent (cms.models.Page instance) – Used for automated slug generation
• overwrite_url (str) – Overwritten path for this page
• page_title (str) – Overriden page title for html title tag
cms.api.add_plugin(placeholder, plugin_type, language, position=’last-child’, target=None, **data)
Adds a plugin to a placeholder and returns it.
Parameters
• placeholder (cms.models.placeholdermodel.Placeholder instance)
– Placeholder to add the plugin to
• plugin_type (str or cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase sub-class, must be
a valid plugin) – What type of plugin to add
• language (str) – Language code for this plugin, must be in LANGUAGES
• position (str) – Position to add this plugin to the placeholder, must be a valid
django-treebeard pos value for treebeard.models.Node.add_sibling()
• target – Parent plugin. Must be plugin instance
• data – Data for the plugin type instance
cms.api.create_page_user(created_by, user, can_add_page=True, can_change_page=True,
can_delete_page=True, can_recover_page=True,
can_add_pageuser=True, can_change_pageuser=True,
can_delete_pageuser=True, can_add_pagepermission=True,
can_change_pagepermission=True, can_delete_pagepermission=True,
grant_all=False)
Creates a page user for the user provided and returns that page user.
Parameters

• created_by (django.contrib.auth.models.User instance) – The user

that creates the page user
• user (django.contrib.auth.models.User instance) – The user to create
the page user from
• can_* (bool) – Permissions to give the user
• grant_all (bool) – Grant all permissions to the user
cms.api.assign_user_to_page(page, user, grant_on=ACCESS_PAGE_AND_DESCENDANTS,
can_add=False, can_change=False, can_delete=False,
can_change_advanced_settings=False, can_publish=False,
can_change_permissions=False, can_move_page=False,
grant_all=False)
Assigns a user to a page and gives them some permissions. Returns the cms.models.PagePermission
object that gets created.
Parameters
• page (cms.models.Page instance) – The page to assign the user to
• user (django.contrib.auth.models.User instance) – The user to assign to
the page
• grant_on (cms.models.ACCESS_PAGE, cms.models.
ACCESS_CHILDREN , cms.models.ACCESS_DESCENDANTS or cms.
models.ACCESS_PAGE_AND_DESCENDANTS) – Controls which pages are
affected
• can_* – Permissions to grant
• grant_all (bool) – Grant all permissions to the user
cms.api.publish_page(page, user, language)
Publishes a page.
Parameters
• page (cms.models.Page instance) – The page to publish
• user (django.contrib.auth.models.User instance) – The user that per-
forms this action
• language (str) – The target language to publish to
cms.api.publish_pages(include_unpublished=False, language=None, site=None)
Publishes multiple pages defined by parameters.
Parameters
• include_unpublished (bool) – Set to True to publish all drafts, including
unpublished ones; otherwise, only already published pages will be republished
• language (str) – If given, only pages in this language will be published; otherwise,
all languages will be published
• site (django.contrib.sites.models.Site instance) – Specify a site to
publish pages for specified site only; if not specified pages from all sites are published
get_page_draft(page):
Returns the draft version of a page, regardless if the passed in page is a published version or a draft version.
Parameters page (cms.models.Page instance) – The page to get the draft version
Return page draft version of the page
copy_plugins_to_language(page, source_language, target_language, only_empty=True):
Copy the plugins to another language in the same page for all the page placeholders.
By default plugins are copied only if placeholder has no plugin for the target language; use
only_empty=False to change this.
Warning: This function skips permissions checks

Parameters
• page (cms.models.Page instance) – the page to copy
• source_language (str) – The source language code, must be in LANGUAGES
• target_language (str) – The source language code, must be in LANGUAGES
• only_empty (bool) – if False, plugin are copied even if plugins exists in the target
language (on a placeholder basis).
Return int number of copied plugins
Example workflows
Create a page called 'My Page using the template 'my_template.html' and add a text plugin with the content
'hello world'. This is done in English:
from cms.api import create_page, add_plugin
page = create_page('My Page', 'my_template.html', 'en')

placeholder = page.placeholders.get(slot='body')
add_plugin(placeholder, 'TextPlugin', 'en', body='hello world')
cms.constants
cms.constants.TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE_MAGIC
The token used to identify when a user selects “inherit” as template for a page.
cms.constants.LEFT
Used as a position indicator in the toolbar.
cms.constants.RIGHT
Used as a position indicator in the toolbar.
cms.constants.REFRESH
Constant used by the toolbar.
cms.constants.EXPIRE_NOW
Constant of 0 (zero) used for cache control headers
cms.constants.MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL
Constant of 31536000 or 365 days in seconds used for cache control headers
cms.app_base
class cms.app_base.CMSApp
_urls
list of urlconfs: example: _urls = ["myapp.urls"]
_menus
list of menu classes: example: _menus = [MyAppMenu]
name = None
name of the apphook (required)
app_name = None
name of the app, this enables Django namespaces support (optional)

app_config = None
configuration model (optional)
permissions = True
if set to true, apphook inherits permissions from the current page
exclude_permissions = []
list of application names to exclude from inheriting CMS permissions
get_configs()
Returns all the apphook configuration instances.
get_config(namespace)
Returns the apphook configuration instance linked to the given namespace
get_config_add_url()
Returns the url to add a new apphook configuration instance (usually the model admin add view)
get_menus(page, language, **kwargs)
New in version 3.3: CMSApp.get_menus accepts page, language and generic keyword arguments: you
can customize this function to return different list of menu classes according to the given arguments.
Returns the menus for the apphook instance, selected according to the given arguments.
By default it returns the menus assigned to _menus
If no page and language are provided, this method must return all the menus used by this apphook.
Example:
if page and page.reverse_id == 'page1':

return [Menu1]
elif page and page.reverse_id == 'page2':
return [Menu2]
else:
return [Menu1, Menu2]
param page page the apphook is attached to

param language current site language
return list of menu classes
get_urls(page, language, **kwargs)
New in version 3.3.
Returns the URL configurations for the apphook instance, selected according to the given arguments.
By default it returns the urls assigned to _urls
This method must return a non empty list of URL configurations, even if no arguments are passed.
Parameters
• page – page the apphook is attached to
• language – current site language
Returns list of strings representing URL configurations
Command Line Interface
You can invoke the django CMS command line interface using the cms Django command:
python manage.py cms

Informational commands
cms list
The list command is used to display information about your installation.

It has two sub-commands:
• cms list plugins lists all plugins that are used in your project.
• cms list apphooks lists all apphooks that are used in your project.
cms list plugins will issue warnings when it finds orphaned plugins (see cms
delete-orphaned-plugins below).
cms check
Checks your configuration and environment.
Plugin and apphook management commands
cms delete-orphaned-plugins
Warning: The delete-orphaned-plugins command permanently deletes data from your database. You
should make a backup of your database before using it!
Identifies and deletes orphaned plugins.

Orphaned plugins are ones that exist in the CMSPlugins table, but:
• have a plugin_type that is no longer even installed
• have no corresponding saved instance in that particular plugin type’s table
Such plugins will cause problems when trying to use operations that need to copy pages (and therefore plugins), which
includes cms moderator on as well as page copy operations in the admin.
It is recommended to run cms list plugins periodically, and cms delete-orphaned-plugins when
required.
cms uninstall
The uninstall subcommand can be used to make uninstalling a CMS plugin or an apphook easier.
• cms uninstall plugins <plugin name> [<plugin name 2> [...]] uninstalls one or sev-
eral plugins by removing them from all pages where they are used. Note that the plugin name should be the
name of the class that is registered in the django CMS. If you are unsure about the plugin name, use the cms list
to see a list of installed plugins.
• cms uninstall apphooks <apphook name> [<apphook name 2> [...]] uninstalls one or
several apphooks by removing them from all pages where they are used. Note that the apphook name should be

the name of the class that is registered in the django CMS. If you are unsure about the apphook name, use the
cms list to see a list of installed apphooks.
Warning: The uninstall commands permanently delete data from your database. You should make a backup of
your database before using them!
cms copy
The copy command is used to copy content from one language or site to another.
• cms copy lang copy content to a given language.
• cms copy site copy pages and content to a given site.
cms copy lang
The copy lang subcommand can be used to copy content (titles and plugins) from one language to another. By
default the subcommand copy content from the current site (e.g. the value of SITE_ID) and only if the target
placeholder has no content for the specified language; using the defined options you can change this.
You must provide two arguments:
• --from-lang: the language to copy the content from;
• --to-lang: the language to copy the content to.
It accepts the following options
• --force: set to copy content even if a placeholder already has content; if set, copied content will be appended
to the original one;
• --site: specify a SITE_ID to operate on sites different from the current one;
• --verbosity: set for more verbose output.
• --skip-content: if set, content is not copied, and the command will only create titles in the given language.
Example:
cms copy lang --from-lang=en --to-lang=de --force --site=2 --verbosity=2
cms copy site
The copy site subcommand can be used to copy content (pages and plugins) from one site to another. The sub-
command copy content from the from-site to to-site; please note that static placeholders are copied as they
are shared across sites. The whole source tree is copied, in the root of the target website. Existing pages on the target
website are not modified.
You must provide two arguments:
• --from-site: the site to copy the content from;
• --to-site: the site to copy the content to.
Example:

cms copy site --from-site=1 --to-site=2
Moderation commands
cms moderator
If you migrate from an earlier version, you should use the cms moderator on command to ensure that your
published pages are up to date, whether or not you used moderation in the past.
Warning: This command alters data in your database. You should make a backup of your database before using
it! Never run this command without first checking for orphaned plugins, using the cms list plugins com-
mand, and if necessary delete-orphaned-plugins. Running cms moderator with orphaned plugins
will fail and leave bad data in your database.
cms publisher-publish
If you want to publish many pages at once, this command can help you. By default, this command publishes drafts for
all public pages.
It accepts the following options
• --unpublished: set to publish all drafts, including unpublished ones; if not set, only already published
pages will be republished.
• -l, --language: specify a language code to publish pages in only one language; if not specified, this com-
mand publishes all page languages;
• --site: specify a site id to publish pages for specified site only; if not specified, this command publishes
pages for all sites;
Example:
#publish drafts for public pages in all languages

cms publisher-publish
#publish all drafts in all pages

cms publisher-publish --unpublished
#publish drafts for public pages in deutsch

cms publisher-publish --language=de
#publish all drafts in deutsch

cms publisher-publish --unpublished --language=de
#publish all drafts in deutsch, but only for site with id=2
cms publisher-publish --unpublished --language=de --site=2
Warning: This command publishes drafts. You should review drafts before using this command, because they
will become public.

Maintenance and repair
fix-tree
Occasionally, the pages and plugins tree can become corrupted. Typical symptoms include problems when trying to
copy or delete plugins or pages.
This command will fix small corruptions by rebuilding the tree.
fix-mptt
Occasionally, the MPTT tree can become corrupted (this is one of the reasons for our move away from MPTT to MP
in django CMS 3.1). Typical symptoms include problems when trying to copy or delete plugins or pages.
This command has been removed in django CMS 3.1 and replaced with fix-tree.
Configuration
django CMS has a number of settings to configure its behaviour. These should be available in your settings.py
file.
The INSTALLED_APPS setting
The ordering of items in INSTALLED_APPS matters. Entries for applications with plugins should come after cms.
The MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting
cms.middleware.utils.ApphookReloadMiddleware
Adding ApphookReloadMiddleware to the MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES tuple will enable automatic server restarts
when changes are made to apphook configurations. It should be placed as near to the top of the classes as possible.
Note: This has been tested and works in many production environments and deployment configurations, but we
haven’t been able to test it with all possible set-ups. Please file an issue if you discover one where it fails.
Custom User Requirements
When using a custom user model (i.e. the AUTH_USER_MODEL Django setting), there are a few requirements that
must be met.
django CMS expects a user model with at minimum the following fields: email, password, is_active,
is_staff, and is_superuser. Additionally, it should inherit from AbstractBaseUser and
PermissionsMixin (or AbstractUser), and must define one field as the USERNAME_FIELD (see Django
documentation for more details) and define a get_full_name() method.
The models must also be editable via Django’s admin and have an admin class registered.
Additionally, the application in which the model is defined must be loaded before cms in INSTALLED_APPS.

Note: In most cases, it is better to create a UserProfile model with a one to one relationship to auth.User
rather than creating a custom user model. Custom user models are only necessary if you intended to alter the default
behaviour of the User model, not simply extend it.
Additionally, if you do intend to use a custom user model, it is generally advisable to do so only at the beginning of a
project, before the database is created.
Required Settings
CMS_TEMPLATES
default () (Not a valid setting!)

A list of templates you can select for a page.
Example:
CMS_TEMPLATES = (
('base.html', gettext('default')),
('2col.html', gettext('2 Column')),
('3col.html', gettext('3 Column')),
('extra.html', gettext('Some extra fancy template')),
)
Note: All templates defined in CMS_TEMPLATES must contain at least the js and css sekizai namespaces. For an
example, see Templates.
Note: Alternatively you can use CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR to define a directory containing templates for django CMS.
Warning: django CMS requires some special templates to function correctly. These are provided within cms/
templates/cms. You are strongly advised not to use cms as a directory name for your own project templates.
Basic Customisation
CMS_TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE
default True
Enables the inheritance of templates from parent pages.
When enabled, pages’ Template options will include a new default: Inherit from the parent page (unless the page is
a root page).
CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR
default None

Instead of explicitly providing a set of templates via CMS_TEMPLATES a directory can be provided using this config-
uration.
CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR can be set to the (absolute) path of the templates directory, or set to a dictionary with
SITE_ID: template path items:
CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR: {
1: '/absolute/path/for/site/1/',
2: '/absolute/path/for/site/2/',
}
The provided directory is scanned and all templates in it are loaded as templates for django CMS.
Template loaded and their names can be customised using the templates dir as a python module, by creating a
__init__.py file in the templates directory. The file contains a single TEMPLATES dictionary with the list of
templates as keys and template names as values:::
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
TEMPLATES = {
'col_two.html': _('Two columns'),
'col_three.html': _('Three columns'),
}
Being a normal python file, templates labels can be passed through gettext for translation.
Note: As templates are still loaded by the Django template loader, the given directory must be reachable by the
template loading system. Currently filesystem and app_directory loader schemas are tested and supported.
CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF
default {}
Used to configure placeholders. If not given, all plugins will be available in all placeholders.
Example:
CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF = {
None: {
"plugins": ['TextPlugin'],
'excluded_plugins': ['InheritPlugin'],
},
'content': {
'plugins': ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin'],
'text_only_plugins': ['LinkPlugin'],
'extra_context': {"width":640},
'name': gettext("Content"),
'language_fallback': True,
'default_plugins': [
{
'plugin_type': 'TextPlugin',
'values': {
'body':'<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...</p>',
},
},
],


'child_classes': {
'TextPlugin': ['PicturePlugin', 'LinkPlugin'],
},
'parent_classes': {
'LinkPlugin': ['TextPlugin'],
},
},
'right-column': {
"plugins": ['TeaserPlugin', 'LinkPlugin'],
"extra_context": {"width": 280},
'name': gettext("Right Column"),
'limits': {
'global': 2,
'TeaserPlugin': 1,
'LinkPlugin': 1,
},
'plugin_modules': {
'LinkPlugin': 'Extra',
},
'plugin_labels': {
'LinkPlugin': 'Add a link',
},
},
'base.html content': {
"plugins": ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin', 'TeaserPlugin'],
'inherit': 'content',
},
}
You can combine template names and placeholder names to define plugins in a granular fashion, as shown above with
base.html content.
Configuration is retrieved in the following order:
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[‘template placeholder’]
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[‘placeholder’]
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[‘template’]
• CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF[None]
The first CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF key that matches for the required configuration attribute is used.
E.g: given the example above if the plugins configuration is retrieved for the content place-
holder in a page using the base.html template, the value ['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin',
'TeaserPlugin'] will be returned as 'base.html content' matches; if the same configuration is re-
trieved for the content placeholder in a page using fullwidth.html template, the returned value will be
['TextPlugin', 'PicturePlugin']. If plugins configuration is retrieved for sidebar_left place-
holder, ['TextPlugin'] from CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF key None will be returned.
plugins A list of plugins that can be added to this placeholder. If not supplied, all plugins can be selected.
text_only_plugins A list of additional plugins available only in the TextPlugin, these plugins can’t be added
directly to this placeholder.
excluded_plugins A list of plugins that will not be added to the given placeholder; this takes precedence over
plugins configuration: if a plugin is present in both lists, it will not be available in the placeholder. This is
basically a way to blacklist a plugin: even if registered, it will not be available in the placeholder. If set on

the None (default) key, the plugins will not be available in any placeholder (except the excluded_plugins
configuration is overridden in more specific CMS_PLACEHOLDER_KEYS.
extra_context Extra context that plugins in this placeholder receive.
name The name displayed in the Django admin. With the gettext stub, the name can be internationalised.
limits Limit the number of plugins that can be placed inside this placeholder. Dictionary keys are plugin names
and the values are their respective limits. Special case: global - Limit the absolute number of plugins in this
placeholder regardless of type (takes precedence over the type-specific limits).
language_fallback When True, if the placeholder has no plugin for the current language it falls back to the
fallback languages as specified in CMS_LANGUAGES. Defaults to True since version 3.1.
default_plugins You can specify the list of default plugins which will be automatically added when the place-
holder will be created (or rendered). Each element of the list is a dictionary with following keys :
plugin_type The plugin type to add to the placeholder Example : TextPlugin
values Dictionary to use for the plugin creation. It depends on the plugin_type. See the documenta-
tion of each plugin type to see which parameters are required and available. Example for a text plugin:
{'body':'<p>Lorem ipsum</p>'} Example for a link plugin: {'name':'Django-CMS',
'url':'https://www.django-cms.org'}
children It is a list of dictionaries to configure default plugins to add as children for the current plugin (it
must accepts children). Each dictionary accepts same args than dictionaries of default_plugins :
plugin_type, values, children (yes, it is recursive).
Complete example of default_plugins usage:
CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF = {
'content': {
'name' : _('Content'),
'plugins': ['TextPlugin', 'LinkPlugin'],
'default_plugins':[
{
'plugin_type':'TextPlugin',
'values':{
'body':'<p>Great websites : %(_tag_child_1)s and %(_tag_child_
˓→2)s</p>'
},
'children':[
{
'plugin_type':'LinkPlugin',
'values':{
'name':'django',
'url':'https://www.djangoproject.com/'
},
},
{
'plugin_type':'LinkPlugin',
'values':{
'name':'django-cms',
'url':'https://www.django-cms.org'
},
# If using LinkPlugin from djangocms-link which
# accepts children, you could add some grandchildren :
# 'children' : [
# ...
# ]


},
]
},
]
}
}
plugin_modules A dictionary of plugins and custom module names to group plugin in the toolbar UI.
plugin_labels A dictionary of plugins and custom labels to show in the toolbar UI.
child_classes A dictionary of plugin names with lists describing which plugins may be placed inside each
plugin. If not supplied, all plugins can be selected.
parent_classes A dictionary of plugin names with lists describing which plugins may contain each plugin. If
not supplied, all plugins can be selected.
require_parent A Boolean indication whether that plugin requires another plugin as parent or not.
inherit Placeholder name or template name + placeholder name which inherit. In the example, the configura-
tion for base.html content inherits from content and just overwrites the plugins setting to allow
TeaserPlugin, thus you have not to duplicate the configuration of content.
CMS_PLUGIN_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
default []
A list of plugin context processors. Plugin context processors are callables that modify all plugins’ context before
rendering. See How to create Plugins for more information.
CMS_PLUGIN_PROCESSORS
default []
A list of plugin processors. Plugin processors are callables that modify all plugins’ output after rendering. See How
to create Plugins for more information.
CMS_APPHOOKS
default: ()
A list of import paths for cms.app_base.CMSApp sub-classes.
By default, apphooks are auto-discovered in applications listed in all INSTALLED_APPS, by trying to import their
cms_app module.
When CMS_APPHOOKS is set, auto-discovery is disabled.
Example:
CMS_APPHOOKS = (
'myapp.cms_app.MyApp',
'otherapp.cms_app.MyFancyApp',
'sampleapp.cms_app.SampleApp',
)

Internationalisation and localisation (I18N and L10N)
CMS_LANGUAGES
default Value of LANGUAGES converted to this format

Defines the languages available in django CMS.
Example:
CMS_LANGUAGES = {
1: [
{
'code': 'en',
'name': gettext('English'),
'fallbacks': ['de', 'fr'],
'public': True,
'hide_untranslated': True,
'redirect_on_fallback':False,
},
{
'code': 'de',
'name': gettext('Deutsch'),
'fallbacks': ['en', 'fr'],
'public': True,
},
{
'code': 'fr',
'name': gettext('French'),
'public': False,
},
],
2: [
{
'code': 'nl',
'name': gettext('Dutch'),
'public': True,
'fallbacks': ['en'],
},
],
'default': {
'fallbacks': ['en', 'de', 'fr'],
'redirect_on_fallback':True,
'public': True,
'hide_untranslated': False,
}
}
Note: Make sure you only define languages which are also in LANGUAGES.
Warning: Make sure you use language codes (en-us) and not locale names (en_US) here and in LANGUAGES.
Use check command to check for correct syntax.
CMS_LANGUAGES has different options where you can define how different languages behave, with granular control.

On the first level you can set values for each SITE_ID. In the example above we define two sites. The first site has 3
languages (English, German and French) and the second site has only Dutch.
The default node defines default behaviour for all languages. You can overwrite the default settings with language-
specific properties. For example we define hide_untranslated as False globally, but the English language
overwrites this behaviour.
Every language node needs at least a code and a name property. code is the ISO 2 code for the language, and name
is the verbose name of the language.
Note: With a gettext() lambda function you can make language names translatable. To enable this add gettext
= lambda s: s at the beginning of your settings file.
What are the properties a language node can have?
code
String. RFC5646 code of the language.

example "en".
Note: Is required for every language.
name
String. The verbose name of the language.
Note: Is required for every language.
public
Determines whether this language is accessible in the frontend. You may want for example to keep a language private
until your content has been fully translated.
type Boolean
default True
fallbacks
A list of alternative languages, in order of preference, that are to be used if a page is not translated yet..
example ['de', 'fr']
default []

hide_untranslated
Hides untranslated pages in menus.

When applied to the default directive, if False, all pages in menus will be listed in all languages, including those
that don’t yet have content in a particular language. If True, untranslated pages will be hidden.
When applied to a particular language, hides that language’s pages in menus until translations exist for them.
type Boolean
default True
redirect_on_fallback
Determines behaviour when the preferred language is not available. If True, will redirect to the URL of the same
page in the fallback language. If False, the content will be displayed in the fallback language, but there will be no
redirect.
Note that this applies to the fallback behaviour of pages. Starting for 3.1 placeholders will default to the
same behaviour. If you do not want a placeholder to follow a page’s fallback behaviour, you must set its
language_fallback to False in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF, above.
type Boolean
default True
Unicode support for automated slugs
If your site has languages which use non-ASCII character sets, CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST and
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION will allow it to automate slug generation for those languages too.
Support for this is provided by the unihandecode.js project.
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST
default None
Must be set to the URL where you host your unihandecode.js files. For licensing reasons, django CMS does not
include unihandecode.js.
If set to None, the default, unihandecode.js is not used.
Note: Unihandecode.js is a rather large library, especially when loading support for Japanese. It is therefore very
important that you serve it from a server that supports gzip compression. Further, make sure that those files can be
cached by the browser for a very long period.
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION
default None
Must be set to the version number (eg '1.0.0') you want to use. Together with CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST
this setting is used to build the full URLs for the javascript files. URLs are built like this:
<CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST>-<CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION>.<DECODER>.min.js.

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS
default ['ja', 'zh', 'vn', 'kr', 'diacritic']

If you add additional decoders to your CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST, you can add them to this setting.
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DEFAULT_DECODER
default 'diacritic'
The default decoder to use when unihandecode.js support is enabled, but the current language does not provide a
specific decoder in CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS. If set to None, failing to find a specific decoder will disable
unihandecode.js for this language.
Example
Add these to your project’s settings:
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST = '/static/unihandecode/'
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION = '1.0.0'
CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS = ['ja', 'zh', 'vn', 'kr', 'diacritic']
Add the library files from GitHub ojii/unihandecode.js tree/dist to your static folder:
project/
static/
unihandecode/
unihandecode-1.0.0.core.min.js
unihandecode-1.0.0.diacritic.min.js
unihandecode-1.0.0.ja.min.js
unihandecode-1.0.0.kr.min.js
unihandecode-1.0.0.vn.min.js
unihandecode-1.0.0.zh.min.js
More documentation is available on unihandecode.js’ Read the Docs.
Media Settings
CMS_MEDIA_PATH
default cms/
The path from MEDIA_ROOT to the media files located in cms/media/
CMS_MEDIA_ROOT
default MEDIA_ROOT + CMS_MEDIA_PATH

The path to the media root of the cms media files.

CMS_MEDIA_URL
default MEDIA_URL + CMS_MEDIA_PATH

The location of the media files that are located in cms/media/cms/
CMS_PAGE_MEDIA_PATH
default 'cms_page_media/'
By default, django CMS creates a folder called cms_page_media in your static files folder where all uploaded
media files are stored. The media files are stored in sub-folders numbered with the id of the page.
You need to ensure that the directory to which it points is writeable by the user under which Django will be running.
Advanced Settings
CMS_INTERNAL_IPS
default []
By default CMS_INTERNAL_IPS is an empty list ([]).
If left as an empty list, this setting does not add any restrictions to the toolbar. However, if set, the toolbar will only
appear for client IP addresses that are in this list.
This setting may also be set to an IpRangeList from the external package iptools. This package allows convenient
syntax for defining complex IP address ranges.
The client IP address is obtained via the CMS_REQUEST_IP_RESOLVER in the cms.middleware.toolbar.
ToolbarMiddleware middleware.
CMS_REQUEST_IP_RESOLVER
default ‘cms.utils.request_ip_resolvers.default_request_ip_resolver’
This setting is used system-wide to provide a consistent and plug-able means of extracting a client IP address from the
HTTP request. The default implementation should work for most project architectures, but if not, the administrator
can provide their own method to handle the project’s specific circumstances.
The supplied method should accept a single argument request and return an IP address String.
CMS_PERMISSION
default False
When enabled, 3 new models are provided in Admin:
• Pages global permissions
• User groups - page
• Users - page

In the edit-view of the pages you can now assign users to pages and grant them permissions. In the global permissions
you can set the permissions for users globally.
If a user has the right to create new users he can now do so in the “Users - page”, but he will only see the users he
created. The users he created can also only inherit the rights he has. So if he only has been granted the right to edit
a certain page all users he creates can, in turn, only edit this page. Naturally he can limit the rights of the users he
creates even further, allowing them to see only a subset of the pages to which he is allowed access.
CMS_RAW_ID_USERS
default False
This setting only applies if CMS_PERMISSION is True
The view restrictions and page permissions inlines on the cms.models.Page admin change forms
can cause performance problems where there are many thousands of users being put into simple select boxes. If set to
a positive integer, this setting forces the inlines on that page to use standard Django admin raw ID widgets rather than
select boxes if the number of users in the system is greater than that number, dramatically improving performance.
Note: Using raw ID fields in combination with limit_choices_to causes errors due to excessively long URLs
if you have many thousands of users (the PKs are all included in the URL of the popup window). For this reason, we
only apply this limit if the number of users is relatively small (fewer than 500). If the number of users we need to limit
to is greater than that, we use the usual input field instead unless the user is a CMS superuser, in which case we bypass
the limit. Unfortunately, this means that non-superusers won’t see any benefit from this setting.
Changed in version 3.2.1:: CMS_RAW_ID_USERS also applies to GlobalPagePermission admin.
CMS_PUBLIC_FOR
default all
Determines whether pages without any view restrictions are public by default or staff only. Possible values are all
and staff.
CMS_CACHE_DURATIONS
This dictionary carries the various cache duration settings.
'content'
default 60
Cache expiration (in seconds) for show_placeholder, page_url, placeholder and
static_placeholder template tags.
Note: This settings was previously called CMS_CONTENT_CACHE_DURATION

'menus'
default 3600
Cache expiration (in seconds) for the menu tree.
Note: This settings was previously called MENU_CACHE_DURATION
'permissions'
default 3600
Cache expiration (in seconds) for view and other permissions.
CMS_CACHE_PREFIX
default cms-
The CMS will prepend the value associated with this key to every cache access (set and get). This is useful when you
have several django CMS installations, and you don’t want them to share cache objects.
Example:
CMS_CACHE_PREFIX = 'mysite-live'
Note: Django 1.3 introduced a site-wide cache key prefix. See Django’s own docs on cache key prefixing
CMS_PAGE_CACHE
default True
Should the output of pages be cached? Takes the language, and time zone into account. Pages for logged in users are
not cached. If the toolbar is visible the page is not cached as well.
CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CACHE
default True
Should the output of the various placeholder template tags be cached? Takes the current language and time zone into
account. If the toolbar is in edit mode or a plugin with cache=False is present the placeholders will not be cached.
CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE
default True
Default value of the cache attribute of plugins. Should plugins be cached by default if not set explicitly?

Warning: If you disable the plugin cache be sure to restart the server and clear the cache afterwards.
CMS_TOOLBARS
default None
If defined, specifies the list of toolbar modifiers to be used to populate the toolbar, as import paths. Otherwise, all
available toolbars from both the CMS and the third-party apps will be loaded.
Example:
CMS_TOOLBARS = [
# CMS Toolbars
'cms.cms_toolbars.PlaceholderToolbar',
'cms.cms_toolbars.BasicToolbar',
'cms.cms_toolbars.PageToolbar',
# third-party Toolbar
'aldryn_blog.cms_toolbars.BlogToolbar',
]
CMS_TOOLBAR_ANONYMOUS_ON
default True
This setting controls if anonymous users can see the CMS toolbar with a login form when ?edit is appended to a
URL. The default behaviour is to show the toolbar to anonymous users.
CMS_TOOLBAR_HIDE
default False
By default, the django CMS toolbar is displayed to logged-in admin users on all pages that use the {% cms_toolbar
%} template tag. Its appearance can be optionally restricted to django CMS pages only (technically, pages that are
rendered by a django CMS view).
When this is set to True, all other pages will no longer display the toolbar. This includes pages with apphooks applied
to them, as they are handled by the other application’s views, and not django CMS’s.
Changed in version 3.2.1:: CMS_APP_NAME has been removed as it’s no longer required.
CMS_DEFAULT_X_FRAME_OPTIONS
default constants.X_FRAME_OPTIONS_INHERIT
This setting is the default value for a Page’s X Frame Options setting. This should be an integer preferably taken from
the cms.constants e.g.
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_INHERIT
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_ALLOW
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_SAMEORIGIN

• X_FRAME_OPTIONS_DENY
CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE
default: True
The new structure board operates by default in “simple” mode. The older mode used absolute positioning. Setting this
attribute to False will allow the absolute positioning used in versions prior to 3.2. This setting will be removed in
3.3.
Example:
CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE = False
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE
default TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE_MAGIC
This is the path of the template used to create pages in the wizard. It must be one of the templates in
CMS_TEMPLATES.
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER
default None
When set to an editable, non-static placeholder that is available on the page template, the CMS page wizards will target
the specified placeholder when adding any content supplied in the wizards’ “Content” field. If this is left unset, then
the content will target the first suitable placeholder found on the page’s template.
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN
default TextPlugin
This is the name of the plugin created in the Page Wizard when the “Content” field is filled in. There should be no
need to change it, unless you don’t use djangocms-text-ckeditor in your project.
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY
default body
This is the name of the body field in the plugin created in the Page Wizard when the “Content” field is filled in. There
should be no need to change it, unless you don’t use djangocms-text-ckeditor in your project and your
custom plugin defined in CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN have a body field different than body.
Form and model fields
Model fields
class cms.models.fields.PageField
This is a foreign key field to the cms.models.Page model that defaults to the cms.forms.fields.

PageSelectFormField form field when rendered in forms. It has the same API as the django.db.
models.ForeignKey but does not require the othermodel argument.
class cms.models.fields.PlaceholderField
A foreign key field to the cms.models.placeholdermodel.Placeholder model.
Form fields
class cms.forms.fields.PageSelectFormField
Behaves like a django.forms.ModelChoiceField field for the cms.models.Page model, but dis-
plays itself as a split field with a select drop-down for the site and one for the page. It also indents the page
names based on what level they’re on, so that the page select drop-down is easier to use. This takes the same
arguments as django.forms.ModelChoiceField.
class cms.forms.fields.PageSmartLinkField
A field making use of cms.forms.widgets.PageSmartLinkWidget. This field will offer you a list of
matching internal pages as you type. You can either pick one or enter an arbitrary URL to create a non existing
entry. Takes a placeholder_text argument to define the text displayed inside the input before you type.
The widget uses an ajax request to try to find pages match. It will try to find case insensitive matches amongst
public and published pages on the title, path, page_title, menu_title fields.
Menus and navigation
There are four template tags for use in the templates that are connected to the menu:
• show_menu
• show_menu_below_id
• show_sub_menu
• show_breadcrumb
To use any of these template tags, you need to have {% load menu_tags %} in your template before the line on
which you call the template tag.
Note: Please note that menus live in the menus application, which though tightly coupled to the cms application
exists independently of it. Menus are usable by any application, not just by django CMS.
show_menu
The show_menu tag renders the navigation of the current page. You can overwrite the appearance and the HTML
if you add a menu/menu.html template to your project or edit the one provided with django CMS. show_menu
takes six optional parameters: start_level, end_level, extra_inactive, extra_active, namespace
and root_id.
The first two parameters, start_level (default=0) and end_level (default=100) specify from which level the
navigation should be rendered and at which level it should stop. If you have home as a root node (i.e. level 0) and
don’t want to display the root node(s), set start_level to 1.
The third parameter, extra_inactive (default=0), specifies how many levels of navigation should be displayed if
a node is not a direct ancestor or descendant of the current active node.

The fourth parameter, extra_active (default=100), specifies how many levels of descendants of the currently
active node should be displayed.
The fifth parameter, namespace, is currently not implemented.
The sixth parameter root_id specifies the id of the root node.
You can supply a template parameter to the tag.
Some Examples
Complete navigation (as a nested list):
<ul>
{% show_menu 0 100 100 100 %}
</ul>
Navigation with active tree (as a nested list):
<ul>
{% show_menu 0 100 0 100 %}
</ul>
Navigation with only one active extra level:
<ul>
{% show_menu 0 100 0 1 %}
</ul>
Level 1 navigation (as a nested list):
<ul>
{% show_menu 1 %}
</ul>
Navigation with a custom template:
{% show_menu 0 100 100 100 "myapp/menu.html" %}
show_menu_below_id
If you have set an id in the advanced settings of a page, you can display the sub-menu of this page with a template tag.
For example, we have a page called meta that is not displayed in the navigation and that has the id “meta”:
<ul>
{% show_menu_below_id "meta" %}
</ul>
You can give it the same optional parameters as show_menu:
<ul>
{% show_menu_below_id "meta" 0 100 100 100 "myapp/menu.html" %}
</ul>
Unlike show_menu, however, soft roots will not affect the menu when using show_menu_below_id.

show_sub_menu
Displays the sub menu of the current page (as a nested list).
The first argument, levels (default=100), specifies how many levels deep the sub menu should be displayed.
The second argument, root_level (default=None), specifies at what level, if any, the menu should have its
root. For example, if root_level is 0 the menu will start at that level regardless of what level the current page is on.
The third argument, nephews (default=100), specifies how many levels of nephews (children of siblings) are
shown.
Fourth argument, template (default=menu/sub_menu.html), is the template used by the tag; if you want to
use a different template you must supply default values for root_level and nephews.
Examples:
<ul>
{% show_sub_menu 1 %}
</ul>
Rooted at level 0:
<ul>
{% show_sub_menu 1 0 %}
</ul>
Or with a custom template:
<ul>
{% show_sub_menu 1 None 100 "myapp/submenu.html" %}
</ul>
show_breadcrumb
Show the breadcrumb navigation of the current page. The template for the HTML can be found at menu/
breadcrumb.html.:
{% show_breadcrumb %}
Or with a custom template and only display level 2 or higher:
{% show_breadcrumb 2 "myapp/breadcrumb.html" %}
Usually, only pages visible in the navigation are shown in the breadcrumb. To include all pages in the breadcrumb,
write:
{% show_breadcrumb 0 "menu/breadcrumb.html" 0 %}
If the current URL is not handled by the CMS or by a navigation extender, the current menu node can not be deter-
mined. In this case you may need to provide your own breadcrumb via the template. This is mostly needed for pages
like login, logout and third-party apps. This can easily be accomplished by a block you overwrite in your templates.
For example in your base.html:

<ul>
{% block breadcrumb %}
{% show_breadcrumb %}
{% endblock %}
<ul>
And then in your app template:
{% block breadcrumb %}
<li><a href="/">home</a></li>
<li>My current page</li>
{% endblock %}
Properties of Navigation Nodes in templates
{{ node.is_leaf_node }}
Is it the last in the tree? If true it doesn’t have any children.
{{ node.level }}
The level of the node. Starts at 0.
{{ node.menu_level }}
The level of the node from the root node of the menu. Starts at 0. If your menu starts at level 1 or you have a “soft
root” (described in the next section) the first node would still have 0 as its menu_level.
{{ node.get_absolute_url }}
The absolute URL of the node, without any protocol, domain or port.
{{ node.title }}
The title in the current language of the node.
{{ node.selected }}
If true this node is the current one selected/active at this URL.
{{ node.ancestor }}
If true this node is an ancestor of the current selected node.
{{ node.sibling }}
If true this node is a sibling of the current selected node.
{{ node.descendant }}
If true this node is a descendant of the current selected node.
{{ node.soft_root }}
If true this node is a soft root. A page can be marked as a soft root in its ‘Advanced Settings’.

Modifying & Extending the menu
Please refer to the How to customise navigation menus documentation
Menu system classes and function
menu application
class menus.base.Menu
The base class for all menu-generating classes.
get_nodes(self, request)
Each sub-class of Menu should return a list of NavigationNode instances.
class menus.base.Modifier
The base class for all menu-modifying classes. A modifier add, removes or changes NavigationNodes in the list.
modify(self, request, nodes, namespace, root_id, post_cut, breadcrumb)

Each sub-class of Modifier should implement a modify() method.
class menus.menu_pool.MenuPool
get_nodes()
discover_menus()
apply_modifiers()
_build_nodes()
_mark_selected()
menus.menu_pool._build_nodes_inner_for_one_menu()
menus.templatetags.menu_tags.cut_levels()
class menus.templatetags.menu_tags.ShowMenu
get_context()
class menus.base.NavigationNode(title, url, id[, parent_id=None][, parent_namespace=None][,
attr=None][, visible=True])
Each node in a menu tree is represented by a NavigationNode instance.
Parameters
• title (str) – The title to display this menu item with.
• url (str) – The URL associated with this menu item.
• id – Unique (for the current tree) ID of this item.
• parent_id – Optional, ID of the parent item.
• parent_namespace – Optional, namespace of the parent.
• attr (dict) – Optional, dictionary of additional information to store on this node.
• visible (bool) – Optional, defaults to True, whether this item is visible or not.
attr
A dictionary, provided in order that arbitrary attributes may be added to the node - placing them directly
on the node itself could cause a clash with an existing or future attribute.
An important key in this dictionary is is_page: if True, the node represents a django CMS Page
object.

Nodes that represent CMS pages have the following keys in attr:
• auth_required (bool) – is authentication required to access this page
• is_page (bool) – Always True
• navigation_extenders (list) – navigation extenders connected to this node
• redirect_url (str) – redirect URL of page (if any)
• reverse_id (str) – unique identifier for the page
• soft_root (bool) – whether page is a soft root
• visible_for_authenticated (bool) – visible for authenticated users
• visible_for_anonymous (bool) – visible for anonymous users
get_descendants()
Returns a list of all children beneath the current menu item.
get_ancestors()
Returns a list of all parent items, excluding the current menu item.
get_absolute_url()
Utility method to return the URL associated with this menu item, primarily to follow naming convention
asserted by Django.
get_menu_title()
Utility method to return the associated title, using the same naming convention used by cms.models.
Page.
attr
A dictionary, provided in order that arbitrary attributes may be added to the node - placing them directly
on the node itself could cause a clash with an existing or future attribute.
An important key in this dictionary is is_page: if True, the node represents a django CMS Page
object.
class menus.modifiers.Marker
class menus.modifiers.AuthVisibility
class menus.modifiers.Level
mark_levels()
cms application
class cms.menu.CMSMenu
Subclass of menus.base.Menu. Its get_nodes() creates a list of NavigationNodes based on Page ob-
jects.
class cms.menu.NavExtender
class cms.menu.SoftRootCutter
class cms.menu_bases.CMSAttachMenu
Models
class cms.models.Page
A Page is the basic unit of site structure in django CMS. The CMS uses a hierarchical page model: each page
stands in relation to other pages as parent, child or sibling. This hierarchy is managed by the django-treebeard
library.

A Page also has language-specific properties - for example, it will have a title and a slug for each language it
exists in. These properties are managed by the cms.models.Title model.
Permissions
class cms.models.PagePermission
cms.models.ACCESS_PAGE
cms.models.ACCESS_CHILDREN
cms.models.ACCESS_DESCENDANTS
cms.models.ACCESS_PAGE_AND_DESCENDANTS
Placeholders
class cms.models.placeholdermodel.Placeholder
Placeholders can be filled with plugins, which store or generate content.
class cms.admin.placeholderadmin.PlaceholderAdminMixin
Plugins
CMSPluginBase Attributes and Methods Reference
class cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
Inherits django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin and in most respects behaves like a normal sub-class.
Note however that some attributes of ModelAdmin simply won’t make sense in the context of a Plugin.
Attributes
admin_preview
Default: False
If True, displays a preview in the admin.
allow_children
Default: False
Allows this plugin to have child plugins - other plugins placed inside it?
If True you need to ensure that your plugin can render its children in the plugin template. For example:
{% load cms_tags %}
<div class="myplugin">
{{ instance.my_content }}
{% endfor %}
</div>
instance.child_plugin_instances provides access to all the plugin’s children. They are pre-
filled and ready to use. The child plugins should be rendered using the {% render_plugin %}
template tag.
See also: child_classes, parent_classes, require_parent.

cache
Default: CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE
Is this plugin cacheable? If your plugin displays content based on the user or request or other dynamic
properties set this to False.
If present and set to False, the plugin will prevent the caching of the resulting page.
Important: Setting this to False will effectively disable the CMS page cache and all upstream caches
for pages where the plugin appears. This may be useful in certain cases but for general cache management,
consider using the much more capable get_cache_expiration().
Warning: If you disable a plugin cache be sure to restart the server and clear the cache afterwards.
change_form_template
Default: admin/cms/page/plugin_change_form.html
The template used to render the form when you edit the plugin.
Example:
class MyPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
model = MyModel
name = _("My Plugin")
render_template = "cms/plugins/my_plugin.html"
change_form_template = "admin/cms/page/plugin_change_form.html"
See also: frontend_edit_template.

child_classes
Default: None
A list of Plugin Class Names. If this is set, only plugins listed here can be added to this plugin.
See also: parent_classes.
disable_child_plugins
Default: False
Disables dragging of child plugins in structure mode.
form
Custom form class to be used to edit this plugin.
frontend_edit_template
This attribute is deprecated and will be removed in 3.5.
Default: cms/toolbar/plugin.html
The template used for wrapping the plugin in frontend editing.
See also: change_form_template.
model
Default: CMSPlugin
If the plugin requires per-instance settings, then this setting must be set to a model that inherits from
CMSPlugin.
See also: Storing configuration.

module
Will group the plugin in the plugin picker. If module is None, plugin is listed in the “Generic” group.
name
Will be displayed in the plugin picker.
page_only
Default: False
Set to True if this plugin should only be used in a placeholder that is attached to a django CMS page,
and not other models with PlaceholderFields.
See also: child_classes, parent_classes, require_parent.
parent_classes
Default: None
A list of the names of permissible parent classes for this plugin.
See also: child_classes, require_parent.
render_plugin
If set to False, this plugin will not be rendered at all. Default: True
If True, render_template() must also be defined.
See also: render_template, get_render_template().
render_template
Default: None
The path to the template used to render the template. If render_plugin is True either this or
get_render_template must be defined;
See also: render_plugin , get_render_template().
require_parent
Default: False
Is it required that this plugin is a child of another plugin? Or can it be added to any placeholder, even one
attached to a page.
See also: child_classes, parent_classes.
text_enabled
Default: False
Not all plugins are usable in text plugins. If your plugin is usable in a text plugin:
• set this to True
• make sure your plugin provides its own icon_src()
See also: icon_src, icon_alt.
Methods
get_plugin_urls(instance)
Returns the URL patterns the plugin wants to register views for. They are included under django CMS’s
page admin URLS in the plugin path (e.g.: /admin/cms/page/plugin/<plugin-name>/ in the
default case).
get_plugin_urls() is useful if your plugin needs to talk asynchronously to the admin.
get_render_template()
If you need to determine the plugin render model at render time you can implement the
get_render_template() method on the plugin class; this method takes the same arguments as
render.

The method must return a valid template file path.

Example:
def get_render_template(self, context, instance, placeholder):
if instance.attr = 'one':
return 'template1.html'
else:
return 'template2.html'
See also: render_plugin() , render_template()

get_extra_placeholder_menu_items(self, request, placeholder)
Extends the context menu for all placeholders.
To add one or more custom context menu items that are displayed in the context menu for all placeholders
when in structure mode, override this method in a related plugin to return a list of cms.plugin_base.
PluginMenuItem instances.
get_extra_global_plugin_menu_items(self, request, plugin)
Extends the context menu for all plugins.
To add one or more custom context menu items that are displayed in the context menu for all plugins
when in structure mode, override this method in a related plugin to return a list of cms.plugin_base.
PluginMenuItem instances.
get_extra_local_plugin_menu_items()
Extends the context menu for a specific plugin. To add one or more custom context menu items that are
displayed in the context menu for a given plugin when in structure mode, override this method in the
plugin to return a list of cms.plugin_base.PluginMenuItem instances.
get_cache_expiration(self, request, instance, placeholder)
Provides expiration value to the placeholder, and in turn to the page for determining the appropriate
Cache-Control headers to add to the HTTPResponse object.
Must return one of:
None This means the placeholder and the page will not even consider this plu-
gin when calculating the page expiration.
datetime A specific date and time (timezone-aware) in the future when this
plugin’s content expires.
Important: The returned datetime must be timezone-aware or the

plugin will be ignored (with a warning) during expiration calculations.
int An number of seconds that this plugin’s content can be cached.

There are constants are defined in cms.constants that may be useful: EXPIRE_NOW and
MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL.
An integer value of 0 (zero) or EXPIRE_NOW effectively means “do not cache”. Negative values will be
treated as EXPIRE_NOW . Values exceeding the value MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL will be set to that value.
Negative timedelta values or those greater than MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL will also be ranged in the
same manner.
Similarly, datetime values earlier than now will be treated as EXPIRE_NOW . Values greater than
MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL seconds in the future will be treated as MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL seconds in
the future.
Parameters
• request – Relevant HTTPRequest instance.
• instance – The CMSPlugin instance that is being rendered.

Return type None or datetime or int

get_vary_cache_on(self, request, instance, placeholder)
Returns an HTTP VARY header string or a list of them to be considered by the placeholder and in turn by
the page to caching behaviour.
Overriding this method is optional.
Must return one of:
None This means that this plugin declares no headers for the cache to be varied
upon. (default)
string The name of a header to vary caching upon.
list of strings A list of strings, each corresponding to a header to vary the cache
upon.
icon_alt()
Although it is optional, authors of “text enabled” plugins should consider overriding this function as well.
This function accepts the instance as a parameter and returns a string to be used as the alt text for
the plugin’s icon which will appear as a tooltip in most browsers. This is useful, because if the same
plugin is used multiple times within the same text plugin, they will typically all render with the same icon
rendering them visually identical to one another. This alt text and related tooltip will help the operator
distinguish one from the others.
By default icon_alt() will return a string of the form: “[plugin type] - [instance]”, but can be modified
to return anything you like.
icon_alt() takes 1 argument:
The default implementation is as follows:
def icon_alt(self, instance):

return "%s - %s" % (force_text(self.name), force_text(instance))
See also: text_enabled, icon_src.

icon_src(instance)
By default, this returns an empty string, which, if left unoverridden would result in no icon rendered at
all, which, in turn, would render the plugin uneditable by the operator inside a parent text plugin.
Therefore, this should be overridden when the plugin has text_enabled set to True to return the path
to an icon to display in the text of the text plugin.
icon_src takes 1 argument:
Example:
def icon_src(self, instance):

return settings.STATIC_URL + "cms/img/icons/plugins/link.png"
See also: text_enabled, icon_alt()

render(context, instance, placeholder)
This method returns the context to be used to render the template specified in render_template.
The render() method takes three arguments:
• context: The context with which the page is rendered.
• instance: The instance of your plugin that is rendered.
• placeholder: The name of the placeholder that is rendered.
This method must return a dictionary or an instance of django.template.Context, which will be
used as context to render the plugin template.

New in version 2.4.

By default this method will add instance and placeholder to the context, which means for simple
plugins, there is no need to overwrite this method.
If you overwrite this method it’s recommended to always populate the context with default values by
calling the render method of the super class:
context = super(MyPlugin, self).render(context, instance, placeholder)
...
return context
Parameters
• context – Current template context.
• instance – Plugin instance that is being rendered.
• placeholder – Name of the placeholder the plugin is in.
Return type dict
text_editor_button_icon()
When text_enabled is True, this plugin can be added in a text editor and there might be an icon
button for that purpose. This method allows to override this icon.
By default, it returns None and each text editor plugin may have its own fallback icon.
text_editor_button_icon() takes 2 arguments:
• editor_name: The plugin name of the text editor
• icon_context: A dictionary containing information about the needed icon like width, height,
theme, etc
Usually this method should return the icon URL. But, it may depends on the text editor because what is
needed may differ. Please consult the documentation of your text editor plugin.
This requires support from the text plugin; support for this is currently planned for djangocms-text-
ckeditor 2.5.0.
See also: text_enabled.
class cms.plugin_base.PluginMenuItem
__init___(name, url, data, question=None, action=’ajax’, attributes=None)

Creates an item in the plugin / placeholder menu
Parameters
• name – Item name (label)
• url – URL the item points to. This URL will be called using POST
• data – Data to be POSTed to the above URL
• question – Confirmation text to be shown to the user prior to call the given
URL (optional)
• action – Custom action to be called on click; currently supported: ‘ajax’,
‘ajax_add’
• attributes – Dictionary whose content will be added as data-attributes to
the menu item
CMSPlugin Attributes and Methods Reference
class cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
See also: Storing configuration
Attributes

translatable_content_excluded_fields
Default: [ ]
A list of plugin fields which will not be exported while using get_translatable_content().
See also: get_translatable_content(), set_translatable_content().
Methods
copy_relations()
Handle copying of any relations attached to this plugin. Custom plugins have to do this themselves.
copy_relations takes 1 argument:
• old_instance: The source plugin instance
See also: Handling Relations, post_copy().
get_translatable_content()
Get a dictionary of all content fields (field name / field value pairs) from the plugin.
Example:
from djangocms_text_ckeditor.models import Text
plugin = Text.objects.get(pk=1).get_plugin_instance()[0]
plugin.get_translatable_content()
# returns {'body': u'<p>I am text!</p>\n'}
See also: translatable_content_excluded_fields, set_translatable_content.

post_copy()
Can (should) be overridden to handle the copying of plugins which contain children plugins after the
original parent has been copied.
post_copy takes 2 arguments:
• old_instance: The old plugin instance instance
• new_old_ziplist: A list of tuples containing new copies and the old existing child plugins.
See also: Handling Relations, copy_relations().
set_translatable_content()
Takes a dictionary of plugin fields (field name / field value pairs) and overwrites the plugin’s fields.
Returns True if all fields have been written successfully, and False otherwise.
set_translatable_content takes 1 argument:
• fields: A dictionary containing the field names and translated content for each.
• get_translatable_content()
Example:
from djangocms_text_ckeditor.models import Text
plugin = Text.objects.get(pk=1).get_plugin_instance()[0]
plugin.set_translatable_content({'body': u'<p>This is a different text!</p>\n
˓→'})
# returns True
See also: translatable_content_excluded_fields, get_translatable_content().

get_add_url()
Returns the URL to call to add a plugin instance; useful to implement plugin-specific logic in a custom
view.

get_edit_url()
Returns the URL to call to edit a plugin instance; useful to implement plugin-specific logic in a custom
view.
get_move_url()
Returns the URL to call to move a plugin instance; useful to implement plugin-specific logic in a custom
view.
get_delete_url()
Returns the URL to call to delete a plugin instance; useful to implement plugin-specific logic in a custom
view.
get_copy_url()
Returns the URL to call to copy a plugin instance; useful to implement plugin-specific logic in a custom
view.
class cms.plugin_pool.PluginPool
Sitemaps
class cms.sitemaps.CMSSitemap
Template Tags
CMS template tags
To use any of the following template tags you first need to load them at the top of your template:
{% load cms_tags %}
Placeholders
placeholder
The placeholder template tag defines a placeholder on a page. All placeholders in a template will be auto-detected
and can be filled with plugins when editing a page that is using said template. When rendering, the content of these
plugins will appear where the placeholder tag was.
Example:
If you want additional content to be displayed in case the placeholder is empty, use the or argument and an addi-
tional {% endplaceholder %} closing tag. Everything between {% placeholder "..." or %} and {%
endplaceholder %} is rendered in the event that the placeholder has no plugins or the plugins do not generate
any output.
Example:

{% placeholder "content" or %}There is no content.{% endplaceholder %}
If you want to add extra variables to the context of the placeholder, you should use Django’s with tag. For instance,
if you want to re-size images from your templates according to a context variable called width, you can pass it as
follows:
{% with 320 as width %}{% placeholder "content" %}{% endwith %}
If you want the placeholder to inherit the content of a placeholder with the same name on parent pages, simply pass
the inherit argument:
{% placeholder "content" inherit %}
This will walk up the page tree up until the root page and will show the first placeholder it can find with content.
It’s also possible to combine this with the or argument to show an ultimate fallback if the placeholder and none of the
placeholders on parent pages have plugins that generate content:
{% placeholder "content" inherit or %}There is no spoon.{% endplaceholder %}
See also the CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF setting where you can also add extra context variables and change some
other placeholder behaviour.
Important: {% placeholder %} will only work inside the template’s <body>.
static_placeholder
The {% static_placeholder %} template tag can be used anywhere in a template element after the {%
cms_toolbar %} tag. A static placeholder instance is not bound to any particular page or model - in other words,
everywhere it appears, a static placeholder will hold exactly the same content.
The {% static_placeholder %} tag is normally used to display the same content on multiple locations or
inside of apphooks or other third party apps.
Otherwise, a static placeholder behaves like a “normal” placeholder, to which plugins can be added.
A static placeholder needs to be published to show up on live pages, and requires a name.
Example:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% static_placeholder "footer" %}
Note: To reduce clutter in the interface, the plugins in static placeholders are hidden by default. Click or tap on the
name of the static placeholder to reveal/hide them.

If you want additional content to be displayed in case the static placeholder is empty, use the or argument and an
additional {% endstatic_placeholder %} closing tag. Everything between {% static_placeholder
"..." or %} and {% endstatic_placeholder %} is rendered in the event that the placeholder has no
plugins or the plugins do not generate any output.
Example:
{% static_placeholder "footer" or %}There is no content.{% endstatic_placeholder %}
By default, a static placeholder applies to all sites in a project.

If you want to make your static placeholder site-specific, so that different sites can have their own content in it, you
can add the flag site to the template tag to achieve this.
Example:
{% static_placeholder "footer" site or %}There is no content.{% endstatic_placeholder

˓→%}
Note that the Django “sites” framework is required and SITE_ID must be set in settings.py for this (not to
mention other aspects of django CMS) to work correctly.
Important: {% static_placeholder %} will only work inside the template’s <body>.
render_placeholder
{% render_placeholder %} is used if you have a PlaceholderField in your own model and want to render it in
the template.
The render_placeholder tag takes the following parameters:
• as keyword followed by varname (optional): the template tag output can be saved as a context variable for
later use.
The following example renders the my_placeholder field from the mymodel_instance and will render only
the English (en) plugins:
{% load cms_tags %}
{% render_placeholder mymodel_instance.my_placeholder language 'en' %}
New in version 3.0.2: This template tag supports the as argument. With this you can assign the result of the template
tag to a new variable that you can use elsewhere in the template.
Example:
{% render_placeholder mymodel_instance.my_placeholder as placeholder_content %}

<p>{{ placeholder_content }}</p>
When used in this manner, the placeholder will not be displayed for editing when the CMS is in edit mode.

render_uncached_placeholder
The same as render_placeholder, but the placeholder contents will not be cached or taken from the cache.
Arguments:
• as keyword followed by varname (optional): the template tag output can be saved as a context variable for
later use.
Example:
{% render_uncached_placeholder mymodel_instance.my_placeholder language 'en' %}
show_placeholder
Displays a specific placeholder from a given page. This is useful if you want to have some more or less static content
that is shared among many pages, such as a footer.
Arguments:
• placeholder_name
• page_lookup (see page_lookup for more information)
• language (optional)
• site (optional)
Examples:
{% show_placeholder "footer" "footer_container_page" %}

{% show_placeholder "content" request.current_page.parent_id %}
{% show_placeholder "teaser" request.current_page.get_root %}
show_uncached_placeholder
The same as show_placeholder, but the placeholder contents will not be cached or taken from the cache.
Arguments:
• placeholder_name
• site (optional)
Example:
{% show_uncached_placeholder "footer" "footer_container_page" %}

page_lookup
The page_lookup argument, passed to several template tags to retrieve a page, can be of any of the following types:
• str: interpreted as the reverse_id field of the desired page, which can be set in the “Advanced” section
when editing a page.
• int: interpreted as the primary key (pk field) of the desired page
• dict: a dictionary containing keyword arguments to find the desired page (for instance: {'pk': 1})
• Page: you can also pass a page object directly, in which case there will be no database lookup.
If you know the exact page you are referring to, it is a good idea to use a reverse_id (a string used to uniquely
name a page) rather than a hard-coded numeric ID in your template. For example, you might have a help page that you
want to link to or display parts of on all pages. To do this, you would first open the help page in the admin interface
and enter an ID (such as help) under the ‘Advanced’ tab of the form. Then you could use that reverse_id with
the appropriate template tags:
{% show_placeholder "right-column" "help" %}

<a href="{% page_url "help" %}">Help page</a>
If you are referring to a page relative to the current page, you’ll probably have to use a numeric page ID or a page
object. For instance, if you want the content of the parent page to display on the current page, you can use:
{% show_placeholder "content" request.current_page.parent_id %}
Or, suppose you have a placeholder called teaser on a page that, unless a content editor has filled it with content
specific to the current page, should inherit the content of its root-level ancestor:
{% placeholder "teaser" or %}
{% show_placeholder "teaser" request.current_page.get_root %}
{% endplaceholder %}
page_url
Displays the URL of a page in the current language.

Arguments:
• site (optional)
• as var_name (version 3.0 or later, optional; page_url can now be used to assign the resulting URL to a
context variable var_name)
Example:
<a href="{% page_url "help" %}">Help page</a>

<a href="{% page_url request.current_page.parent %}">Parent page</a>
If a matching page isn’t found and DEBUG is True, an exception will be raised. However, if DEBUG is False, an
exception will not be raised.
New in version 3.0: page_url now supports the as argument. When used this way, the tag emits nothing, but sets a
variable in the context with the specified name to the resulting value.

When using the as argument PageNotFound exceptions are always suppressed, regardless of the setting of DEBUG
and the tag will simply emit an empty string in these cases.
Example:
{# Emit a 'canonical' tag when the page is displayed on an alternate url #}
{% page_url request.current_page as current_url %}{% if current_url and current_url !
˓→= request.get_full_path %}<link rel="canonical" href="{% page_url request.current_
˓→page %}">{% endif %}
page_attribute
This template tag is used to display an attribute of the current page in the current language.
Arguments:
• attribute_name
• page_lookup (optional; see page_lookup for more information)
Possible values for attribute_name are: "title", "menu_title", "page_title", "slug",
"meta_description", "changed_date", "changed_by" (note that you can also supply that argument
without quotes, but this is deprecated because the argument might also be a template variable).
Example:
{% page_attribute "page_title" %}
If you supply the optional page_lookup argument, you will get the page attribute from the page found by that
argument.
Example:
{% page_attribute "page_title" "my_page_reverse_id" %}
{% page_attribute "page_title" request.current_page.parent_id %}
{% page_attribute "slug" request.current_page.get_root %}
New in version 2.3.2: This template tag supports the as argument. With this you can assign the result of the template
tag to a new variable that you can use elsewhere in the template.
Example:
{% page_attribute "page_title" as title %}
<title>{{ title }}</title>
It even can be used in combination with the page_lookup argument.

Example:
{% page_attribute "page_title" "my_page_reverse_id" as title %}
<a href="/mypage/">{{ title }}</a>
New in version 2.4.
render_plugin
This template tag is used to render child plugins of the current plugin and should be used inside plugin templates.
Arguments:

• plugin
Plugin needs to be an instance of a plugin model.
Example:
{% load cms_tags %}
<div class="multicolumn">
<div style="width: {{ plugin.width }}00px;">
</div>
{% endfor %}
</div>
Normally the children of plugins can be accessed via the child_plugins attribute of plugins. Plugins need the
allow_children attribute to set to True for this to be enabled.
New in version 3.0.
render_plugin_block
This template tag acts like the template tag render_model_block but with a plugin instead of a model as its
target. This is used to link from a block of markup to a plugin’s change form in edit/preview mode.
This is useful for user interfaces that have some plugins hidden from display in edit/preview mode, but the CMS
author needs to expose a way to edit them. It is also useful for just making duplicate or alternate means of triggering
the change form for a plugin.
This would typically be used inside a parent-plugin’s render template. In this example code below, there is a parent
container plugin which renders a list of child plugins inside a navigation block, then the actual plugin contents inside
a DIV.contentgroup-items block. In this example, the navigation block is always shown, but the items are
only shown once the corresponding navigation element is clicked. Adding this render_plugin_block makes it
significantly more intuitive to edit a child plugin’s content, by double-clicking its navigation item in edit mode.
Arguments:
• plugin
Example:
{% load cms_tags l10n %}
{% block section_content %}
<div class="contentgroup-container">
<nav class="contentgroup">
<div class="inner">
<ul class="contentgroup-items">{% for child in children %}
{% if child.enabled %}
<li class="item{{ forloop.counter0|unlocalize }}">
{% render_plugin_block child %}
<a href="#item{{ child.id|unlocalize }}">{{ child.title|safe }}</a>
{% endrender_plugin_block %}
</li>{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>
</nav>


<div class="contentgroup-items">{% for child in children %}
<div class="contentgroup-item item{{ child.id|unlocalize }}{% if not forloop.
˓→counter0 %} active{% endif %}">
{% render_plugin child %}
</div>{% endfor %}
</div>
</div>
{% endblock %}
New in version 3.0.
render_model
render_model is the way to add frontend editing to any Django model. It both renders the content of the given
attribute of the model instance and makes it clickable to edit the related model.
If the toolbar is not enabled, the value of the attribute is rendered in the template without further action.
If the toolbar is enabled, click to call frontend editing code is added.
By using this template tag you can show and edit page titles as well as fields in standard django models, see How to
enable frontend editing for Page and Django models for examples and further documentation.
Example:
<h1>{% render_model my_model "title" "title,abstract" %}</h1>
This will render to:

<h1><cms-plugin class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-title-1">{{ my_model.title
˓→}}</cms-plugin></h1>
Arguments:
• instance: instance of your model in the template
• attribute: the name of the attribute you want to show in the template; it can be a context variable name; it’s
possible to target field, property or callable for the specified model; when used on a page object this argument
accepts the special titles value which will show the page title field, while allowing editing title, menu title
and page title fields in the same form;
• edit_fields (optional): a comma separated list of fields editable in the popup editor; when template tag is
used on a page object this argument accepts the special changelist value which allows editing the pages
changelist (items list);
• language (optional): the admin language tab to be linked. Useful only for django-hvad enabled models.
• filters (optional): a string containing chained filters to apply to the output content; works the same way as
filter template tag;
• view_url (optional): the name of a URL that will be reversed using the instance pk and the language as
arguments;
• view_method (optional): a method name that will return a URL to a view; the method must accept request
as first parameter.
• varname (optional): the template tag output can be saved as a context variable for later use.

Note: By default this template tag escapes the content of the rendered model attribute. This helps prevent a range of
security vulnerabilities stemming from HTML, JavaScript, and CSS Code Injection.
To change this behaviour, the project administrator should carefully review each use of this template tag and ensure
that all content which is rendered to a page using this template tag is cleansed of any potentially harmful HTML
markup, CSS styles or JavaScript.
Once the administrator is satisfied that the content is clean, he or she can add the “safe” filter parameter to the template
tag if the content should be rendered without escaping.
Warning: render_model is only partially compatible with django-hvad: using it with hvad-translated fields
(say {% render_model object ‘translated_field’ %} return error if the hvad-enabled object does not exists in the
current language. As a workaround render_model_icon can be used instead.
New in version 3.0.
render_model_block
render_model_block is the block-level equivalent of render_model:
{% render_model_block my_model %}
<h1>{{ instance.title }}</h1>
<div class="body">
{{ instance.date|date:"d F Y" }}
{{ instance.text }}
</div>
{% endrender_model_block %}
This will render to:

<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-start cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-1"></template>
<h1>{{ my_model.title }}</h1>
<div class="body">
{{ my_model.date|date:"d F Y" }}
{{ my_model.text }}
</div>
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-end cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-1"></template>
In the block the my_model is aliased as instance and every attribute and method is available; also template tags
and filters are available in the block.
Warning: If the {% render_model_block %} contains template tags or template code that rely on or
manipulate context data that the {% render_model_block %} also makes use of, you may experience some
unexpected effects. Unless you are sure that such conflicts will not occur it is advised to keep the code within a {%
render_model_block %} as simple and short as possible.
Arguments:

arguments;
as first parameter.
New in version 3.0.
render_model_icon
render_model_icon is intended for use where the relevant object attribute is not available for user interaction
(for example, already has a link on it, think of a title in a list of items and the titles are linked to the object detail view);
when in edit mode, it renders an edit icon, which will trigger the editing change form for the provided fields.
<h3><a href="{{ my_model.get_absolute_url }}">{{ my_model.title }}</a> {% render_

˓→model_icon my_model %}</h3>
It will render to something like:
<h3>
<a href="{{ my_model.get_absolute_url }}">{{ my_model.title }}</a>
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-start cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-1 cms-
˓→render-model-icon"></template>

<img src="/static/cms/img/toolbar/render_model_placeholder.png">
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-end cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-1 cms-render-
˓→model-icon"></template>
</h3>
Note: Icon and position can be customised via CSS by setting a background to the .cms-render-model-icon
img selector.
Arguments:

arguments;
as first parameter.
New in version 3.0.
render_model_add
render_model_add is similar to render_model_icon but it will enable to create instances of the given in-
stance class; when in edit mode, it renders an add icon, which will trigger the editing add form for the provided
model.
<h3><a href="{{ my_model.get_absolute_url }}">{{ my_model.title }}</a> {% render_

˓→model_add my_model %}</h3>
<h3>
<a href="{{ my_model.get_absolute_url }}">{{ my_model.title }}</a>
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-start cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-1 cms-
˓→render-model-add"></template>

<img src="/static/cms/img/toolbar/render_model_placeholder.png">
˓→model-add"></template>
</h3>
Note: Icon and position can be customised via CSS by setting a background to the .cms-render-model-add
img selector.
Arguments:
• instance: instance of your model, or model class to be added
• edit_fields (optional): a comma separated list of fields editable in the popup editor;

• view_url (optional): the name of a url that will be reversed using the instance pk and the language as
arguments;
as first parameter.
Warning: If passing a class, instead of an instance, and using view_method, please bear in mind that the
method will be called over an empty instance of the class, so attributes are all empty, and the instance does not
exists on the database.
New in version 3.1.
render_model_add_block
render_model_add_block is similar to render_model_add but instead of emitting an icon that is linked to

the add model form in a modal dialog, it wraps arbitrary markup with the same “link”. This allows the developer to
create front-end editing experiences better suited to the project.
All arguments are identical to render_model_add, but the template tag is used in two parts to wrap the markup
that should be wrapped.
{% render_model_add_block my_model_instance %}<div>New Object</div>{% endrender_model_

˓→add_block %}
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-start cms-plugin-myapp-mymodel-1 cms-render-

<div>New Object</div>
Warning: You must pass an instance of your model as instance parameter. The instance passed could be an
existing models instance, or one newly created in your view/plugin. It does not even have to be saved, it is
introspected by the template tag to determine the desired model class.
Arguments:

• edit_fields (optional): a comma separated list of fields editable in the popup editor;
arguments;
as first parameter.
page_language_url
Returns the URL of the current page in an other language:
{% page_language_url "de" %}
{% page_language_url "fr" %}
{% page_language_url "en" %}
If the current URL has no CMS Page and is handled by a navigation extender and the URL changes based on the
language, you will need to set a language_changer function with the set_language_changer function in
menus.utils.
For more information, see Internationalisation.
language_chooser
The language_chooser template tag will display a language chooser for the current page. You can modify the
template in menu/language_chooser.html or provide your own template if necessary.
Example:
{% language_chooser %}
or with custom template:
{% language_chooser "myapp/language_chooser.html" %}
The language_chooser has three different modes in which it will display the languages you can choose from: “raw”
(default), “native”, “current” and “short”. It can be passed as the last argument to the language_chooser tag
as a string. In “raw” mode, the language will be displayed like its verbose name in the settings. In “native” mode
the languages are displayed in their actual language (eg. German will be displayed “Deutsch”, Japanese as “” etc). In
“current” mode the languages are translated into the current language the user is seeing the site in (eg. if the site is
displayed in German, Japanese will be displayed as “Japanisch”). “Short” mode takes the language code (eg. “en”) to
display.
If the current URL has no CMS Page and is handled by a navigation extender and the URL changes based on the
language, you will need to set a language_changer function with the set_language_changer function in
menus.utils.
For more information, see Internationalisation.

Toolbar template tags
The cms_toolbar template tag is included in the cms_tags library and will add the required CSS and javascript
to the sekizai blocks in the base template. The template tag must be placed before any {% placeholder %}
occurrences within your HTML.
Important: {% cms_toolbar %} will only work correctly inside the template’s <body>.
Example:
<body>
{% cms_toolbar %}
{% placeholder "home" %}
...
Note: Be aware that you cannot surround the cms_toolbar tag with block tags. The toolbar tag will render
everything below it to collect all plugins and placeholders, before it renders itself. Block tags interfere with this.
Titles
class cms.models.Title
Titles support pages by providing a storage mechanism, amongst other things, for language-specific properties
of cms.models.Page, such as its title, slug, meta description and so on.
Each Title has a foreign key to cms.models.Page; each cms.models.Page may have several
Titles.
The Toolbar
The toolbar can contain various items, some of which in turn can contain other items. These items are represented by
the classes listed in cms.toolbar.items, and created using the various APIs described below.
Do not instantiate these classes manually

These classes are described here for reference purposes only. It is strongly recommended that you do not create
instances yourself, but use the methods listed here.
Classes and methods
Common parameters (key, verbose_name, position, on_close, disabled, active) and options are de-
scribed at the end of this document.
class cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
The toolbar is an instance of the cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar class. This should not be confused
with the CMSToolbar, the base class for toolbar modifier classes in other applications, that add items to and
otherwise manipulates the toolbar.
It is strongly recommended that you only interact with the toolbar in your own code via:
• the APIs documented here

• toolbar modifier classes based on cms.toolbar_base.CMSToolbar

You will notice that some of the methods documented here do not include some arguments present in the code.
This is the public reference documentation, while the code may be subject to change without warning.
Several of the following methods to create and add objects other objects to the toolbar are inherited from
ToolbarAPIMixin.
add_link_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_link_item
add_sideframe_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_sideframe_item
add_modal_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_modal_item
add_ajax_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_ajax_item
add_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_item
get_or_create_menu(key, verbose_name, position=None, disabled=False)
If a Menu with key already exists, this method will return that menu. Otherwise it will create a menu
with the key identifier.
get_menu(key)
Will return the Menu identified with key, or None.
add_button(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, position=None)
Adds a Button to the toolbar.
add_sideframe_button(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, on_close=None)
Adds a SideframeButton to the toolbar.
add_modal_button(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, on_close=REFRESH_PAGE)
Adds a ModalButton to the toolbar.
add_button_list(position=None)
Adds an (empty) ButtonList to the toolbar and returns it.
edit_mode_active()
Property; returns True if the content or structure board editing modes are active.
watch_models()
Property; a list of models that the toolbar watches for URL changes, so it can redirect to the new URL on
saving.
class cms.toolbar.items.Menu
Provides a menu in the toolbar. Use a CMSToolbar.get_or_create_menu method to create a Menu
instance. Can be added to CMSToolbar.
Inherits from SubMenu below, so shares all of its methods, but in addition has:
get_or_create_menu(key, verbose_name, disabled=False, position=None)
Adds a new sub-menu, at position, and returns a SubMenu.
class cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu
A child of a Menu. Use a Menu.get_or_create_menu method to create a SubMenu instance. Can be
added to Menu.
Several of the following methods to create and add objects are inherited from ToolbarAPIMixin.

add_link_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_link_item
add_sideframe_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_sideframe_item
add_modal_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_modal_item
add_ajax_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_ajax_item
add_item()
See ToolbarAPIMixin.add_item
get_item_count()
Returns the number of items in the menu.
Other methods:
add_break(identifier=None, position=None)
Adds a visual break in the menu, at position, and returns it. identifier may be used to make this
item searchable.
class cms.toolbar.items.LinkItem
Sends a GET request. Use an add_link_item method to create a LinkItem instance. Can be added to
CMSToolbar, Menu, SubMenu.
class cms.toolbar.items.SideframeItem
Sends a GET request; loads response in a sideframe. Use an add_sideframe_item method to create a
SideframeItem instance. Can be added to CMSToolbar, Menu, SubMenu.
class cms.toolbar.items.ModalItem
Sends a GET request; loads response in a modal window. Use an add_modal_item method to create a
ModalItem instance. Can be added to CMSToolbar, Menu, SubMenu.
class cms.toolbar.items.AjaxItem
Sends a POST request. Use an add_ajax_item method to create a AjaxItem instance. Can be added to
CMSToolbar, Menu, SubMenu.
class cms.toolbar.items.Break
A visual break in a menu. Use an add_break method to create a Break instance. Can be added to Menu,
SubMenu.
class cms.toolbar.items.ButtonList
A visually-connected list of one or more buttons. Use an add_button_list() method to create a Button
instance. Can be added to CMSToolbar.
add_button(name, url, active=False, disabled=False)
Adds a Button to the list of buttons and returns it.
add_sideframe_button(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, on_close=None)
Adds a ModalButton to the toolbar.
add_modal_button(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, on_close=REFRESH_PAGE)
Adds an (empty) ButtonList to the toolbar and returns it.
get_buttons()
class cms.toolbar.items.Button
Sends a GET request. Use a CMSToolbar.add_button or ButtonList.add_button() method to
create a Button instance. Can be added to CMSToolbar, ButtonList.

class cms.toolbar.items.SideframeButton
Sends a GET request. Use a CMSToolbar.add_sideframe_button or ButtonList.
add_sideframe_button() method to create a SideframeButton instance. Can be added to
CMSToolbar, ButtonList.
class cms.toolbar.items.ModalButton
Sends a GET request. Use a CMSToolbar.add_modal_button or ButtonList.
add_modal_button() method to create a ModalButton instance. Can be added to CMSToolbar,
ButtonList.
class cms.toolbar.items.BaseItem
All toolbar items inherit from BaseItem. If you need to create a custom toolbar item, sub-class BaseItem.
template
Must be set by sub-classes and point to a Django template
render()
Renders the item and returns it as a string. By default calls get_context() and renders template
with the context returned.
get_context()
Returns the context (as dictionary) for this item.
class cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
Provides APIs used by CMSToolbar and Menu.
add_link_item(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, position=None)
Adds a LinkItem that opens url, and returns it.
add_sideframe_item(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, on_close=None, position=None)
Adds a SideframeItem that opens url in the sideframe and returns it.
add_modal_item(name, url, active=False, disabled=False, on_close=REFRESH_PAGE, posi-
tion=None)
Similar to add_sideframe_item(), but adds a ModalItem that opens opens the url in a modal
dialog instead of the sideframe, and returns it.
add_ajax_item(name, action, active=False, disabled=False, data=None, question=None, posi-
tion=None)
Adds AjaxItem that sends a POST request to action with data, and returns it. data should be
None or a dictionary. The CSRF token will automatically be added to the item.
If a string is provided for question, it will be presented to the user to allow confirmation before the
request is sent.
add_item(item, position=None)
Adds an item (which must be a sub-class of BaseItem), and returns it. This is a low-level API, and you
should always use one of the built-in object-specific methods to add items in preference if possible, using
this method only for custom item classes.
find_items(item_type)
Returns a list of ItemSearchResult objects matching all items of item_type (e.g. LinkItem).
find_first(item_type, **attributes)
Returns the first ItemSearchResult that matches the search, or None. The search strategy is the
same as in find_items(). The return value of this method is safe to use as the position argument
of the various APIs to add items.
class cms.toolbar.items.ItemSearchResult
Returned by the find APIs in ToolbarAPIMixin.
An ItemSearchResult will have two useful attributes:

item
The item found.
index
The index of the item (its position amongst the other items).
The ItemSearchResult itself can be cast to an integer, and supports addition and subtraction of numbers.
See the position parameter for more details, and Control the position of items in the toolbar for examples.
class cms.toolbar_base.CMSToolbar.CMSToolbar
The base class for toolbar modifiers.
See How to extend the Toolbar for more information.
Parameters
The methods described below for creating/modifying toolbar items share a number of common parameters:
key
a unique identifier (typically a string)
verbose_name
the displayed text in the item
position
The position index of the new item in the list of items. May be:
• None - appends the item to the list
• an integer - inserts the item at that index in the list
• an object already in the list - Inserts the item into the list immediately before the object; must be a sub-class
of BaseItem, and must exist in the list
• an ItemSearchResult - inserts the item into the list immediately before the ItemSearchResult.
ItemSearchResult may be treated as an integer.
on_close:
Determines what happens after closing a frame (sideframe or modal) that has been opened by a menu item. May
be:
• None - does nothing when the sideframe closes
• REFRESH_PAGE - refreshes the page when the frame closes
• a URL - opens the URLS when the frame is closed.
disabled
Greys out the item and renders it inoperable.
active
Applies to buttons only; renders the button it its ‘activated’ state.
django CMS constants used in toolbars
cms.constants.REFRESH_PAGE
Supplied to on_close arguments to refresh the current page when the frame is closed, for example:
from cms.constants import REFRESH_PAGE
self.toolbar.add_modal_item(
'Modal item',
url=modal_url,


on_close=REFRESH_PAGE
)
cms.cms_toolbars.ADMIN_MENU_IDENTIFIER
The Site menu (that usually shows the project’s domain name, example.com by default).
ADMIN_MENU_IDENTIFIER allows you to get hold of this object easily. See Finding existing toolbar
items for an example of usage.
New in version 3.2.
Content creation wizards
See the How-to section on wizards for an introduction to creating wizards.

Wizard classes are sub-classes of cms.wizards.wizard_base.Wizard.
They need to be registered with the cms.wizards.wizard_pool.wizard_pool:
Finally, a wizard needs to be instantiated, for example:
title="New MyApp",
weight=200,
)
When instantiating a Wizard object, use the keywords:

title The title of the wizard. This will appear in a large font size on the wizard “menu”
weight The “weight” of the wizard when determining the sort-order.
form The form to use for this wizard. This is mandatory, but can be sub-classed from
django.forms.form or django.forms.ModelForm.
model If a Form is used above, this keyword argument must be supplied and should contain
the model class. This is used to determine the unique wizard “signature” amongst other
things.
template_name An optional template can be supplied.
description The description is optional, but if it is not supplied, the CMS will create one
from the pattern: “Create a new «model.verbose_name» instance.”
edit_mode_on_success If set, the CMS will switch the user to edit-mode by adding an edit
param to the query-string of the URL returned by get_success_url. This is True
by default.
Base Wizard
All wizard classes should inherit from cms.wizards.wizard_base.Wizard. This class implements a number
of methods that may be overridden as required.

Base Wizard methods
get_description
Simply returns the description property assigned during instantiation or one derived from the model if description
is not provided during instantiation. Override this method if this needs to be determined programmatically.
get_title
Simply returns the title property assigned during instantiation. Override this method if this needs to be determined
programmatically.
get_success_url
Once the wizard has completed, the user will be redirected to the URL of the new object that was created. By default,
this is done by return the result of calling the get_absolute_url method on the object. This may then be modified
to force the user into edit mode if the wizard property edit_mode_on_success is True.
In some cases, the created content will not implement get_absolute_url or that redirecting the user is undesir-
able. In these cases, simply override this method. If get_success_url returns None, the CMS will just redirect
to the current page after the object is created.
This method is called by the CMS with the parameter:
obj The created object
kwargs Arbitrary keyword arguments
get_weight
Simply returns the weight property assigned during instantiation. Override this method if this needs to be determined
programmatically.
user_has_add_permission
This should return a boolean reflecting whether the user has permission to create the underlying content for the wizard.
This method is called by the CMS with these parameters:
user The current user
page The current CMS page the user is viewing when invoking the wizard
wizard_pool
wizard_pool includes a read-only property discovered which returns the Boolean True if wizard-discovery
has already occurred and False otherwise.

Wizard pool methods
is_registered
Sometimes, it may be necessary to check to see if a specific wizard has been registered. To do this, simply call:
value = wizard_pool.is_registered(«wizard»)
register
You may notice from the example above that the last line in the sample code is:
This sort of thing should look very familiar, as a similar approach is used for cms_apps, template tags and even
Django’s admin.
Calling the wizard pool’s register method will register the provided wizard into the pool, unless there is al-
ready a wizard of the same module and class name. In this case, the register method will raise a cms.wizards.
wizard_pool.AlreadyRegisteredException.
unregister
It may be useful to unregister wizards that have already been registered with the pool. To do this, simply call:
value = wizard_pool.unregister(«wizard»)
The value returned will be a Boolean: True if a wizard was successfully unregistered or False otherwise.
get_entry
If you would like to get a reference to a specific wizard in the pool, just call get_entry() as follows:
wizard = wizard_pool.get_entry(my_app_wizard)
get_entries
get_entries() is useful if it is required to have a list of all registered wizards. Typically, this is used to iterate
over them all. Note that they will be returned in the order of their weight: smallest numbers for weight are returned
first.:
for wizard in wizard_pool.get_entries():
# do something with a wizard...
4.1.5 Development & community
django CMS is an open-source project, and relies on its community of users to keep getting better.
The contributors to django CMS come from across the world, and have a wide range and levels of skills and expertise.
Every contribution, however small, is valued.

As an open source project, anyone is welcome to contribute in whatever form they are able, which can include taking
part in discussions, filing bug reports, proposing improvements, contributing code or documentation, and testing the
django CMS’s development community
You can join us online:

• in our IRC channel, #django-cms, on irc.freenode.net. If you don’t have an IRC client, you can join our
IRC channel using the KiwiIRC web client, which works pretty well.
• on our django CMS users email list for general django CMS questions and discussion
• on our django CMS developers email list for discussions about the development of django CMS
You can also follow:
• the Travis Continuous Integration build reports
• the @djangocms Twitter account for general announcements
You don’t need to be an expert developer to make a valuable contribution - all you need is a little knowledge of the
system, and a willingness to follow the contribution guidelines.
Remember that contributions to the documentation are highly prized, and key to the success of the django CMS project.
Development is led by a team of core developers, and under the overall guidance of a technical board.
All activity in the community is governed by our Code of Conduct.
Divio AG
django CMS was released under a BSD licence in 2009. It was created at Divio AG of Zürich, Switzerland, by Patrick
Lauber, who led its development for several years.
django CMS represents Divio’s vision for a general-purpose CMS platform able to meet its needs as a web agency
with a large portfolio of different clients. This vision continues to guide the development of django CMS.
Divio’s role in steering the project’s development is formalised in the django CMS technical board, whose members
are drawn both from key staff at Divio and other members of the django CMS community.
Divio hosts the django CMS project website and maintains overall control of the django CMS repository. As the chief
backer of django CMS, and in order to ensure a consistent and long-term approach to the project, Divio reserves the
right of final say in any decisions concerning its development.
Divio remains thoroughly committed to django CMS both as a high-quality technical product and as a healthy open
source project.
Core developers
Leading this process is a small team of core developers - people who have made and continue to make a significant
contribution to the project, and have a good understanding not only of the code powering django CMS, but also the
longer-term aims and directions of the project.
All core developers are volunteers.
Core developers have commit authority to django CMS’s repository on GitHub. It’s up to a core developer to say when
a particular pull request should be committed to the repository.
Core developers also keep an eye on the #django-cms IRC channel on the Freenode network, and the django CMS
users and django CMS developers email lists.

In addition to leading the development of the project, the core developers have an important role in fostering the
community of developers who work with django CMS, and who create the numerous applications, plugins and other
software that integrates with it.
Finally, the core developers are responsible for setting the tone of the community and helping ensure that it continues
to be friendly and welcoming to all who wish to participate. The values and standards of the community are set out in
its Code of Conduct.
Current core developers
• Angelo Dini https://github.com/finalangel

• Daniele Procida https://github.com/evildmp
• Iacopo Spalletti https://github.com/yakky
• Paulo Alvarado https://github.com/czpython
• Stefan Foulis https://github.com/stefanfoulis
• Vadim Sikora https://github.com/vxsx
• Dennis Schwertel https://github.com/kinkerl
• Serhii Sydorenko https://github.com/SydorenkoSergiy
• Krzysztof Socha https://github.com/chaosk
• Malinda Perera https://github.com/malindap92
Core designers
django CMS also receives important contributions from core designers, responsible for key aspects of its visual design:
• Christian Bertschy
• Matthias Nüesch
Retired core developers
• Chris Glass https://github.com/chrisglass

• Øyvind Saltvik https://github.com/fivethreeo
• Benjamin Wohlwend https://github.com/piquadrat
• Martin Koistinen https://github.com/mkoistinen
• Patrick Lauber https://github.com/digi604
• Jonas Obrist https://github.com/ojii
Following a year or so of inactivity, a core developer will be moved to the “Retired” list, with the understanding that
they can rejoin the project in the future whenever they choose.

Becoming a core developer
Anyone can become a core developer. You don’t need to be an expert developer, or know more than anyone else about
the internals of the CMS. You just have to be a regular contributor, who makes a sustained and valuable contribution
to the project.
This contribution can take many forms - not just commits to our codebase. For example, documentation is a valuable
contribution, and so is simply being a member of the community who spends time assisting others.
Any member of the core team can nominate a new person for membership. The nomination will be discussed by the
technical board, and assuming there are no objections raised, approved.
Technical board
Historically, django CMS’s development has been led by members of staff from Divio. It has been (and will continue
to be) a requirement of the CMS that it meet Divio’s needs.
However, as the software has matured and its user-base has dramatically expanded, it has become increasingly im-
portant also to reflect a wider range of perspectives in the development process. The technical board exists to help
guarantee this.
Role
The role of the board is to maintain oversight of the work of the core team, to set key goals for the project and to make
important decisions about the development of the software.
In the vast majority of cases, the team of core developers will be able to resolve questions and make decisions without
the formal input of the technical board; where a disagreement with no clear consensus exists however, the board will
make the necessary definitive decision.
The board is also responsible for making final decisions on the election of new core developers to the team, and -
should it be necessary - the removal of developers who have retired, or for other reasons.
Composition of the board
The the technical board will include key developers from Divio and others in the django CMS development community
- developers who work with django CMS, as well as developers of django CMS - in order to help ensure that all
perspectives are represented in important decisions about the software and the project.
The board may also include representatives of the django CMS community who are not developers but who have a
valuable expertise in key fields (user experience, design, content management, etc).
The current members of the technical board are:
• Angelo Dini
• Christian Bertschy
• Daniele Procida (Chair)
• Iacopo Spalletti
• Jonas Obrist
• Martin Koistinen
• Matteo Larghi

The board will co-opt new members as appropriate.
Development policies
Reporting security issues
Attention: If you think you have discovered a security issue in our code, please report it privately, by emailing
us at security@django-cms.org.
Please do not raise it on:
• IRC
• GitHub
• either of our email lists
or in any other public forum until we have had a chance to deal with it.
Review
All patches should be made as pull requests to the GitHub repository. Patches should never be pushed directly.
Nothing may enter the code-base, including the documentation, without proper review and formal approval from the
core team.
Reviews are welcomed by all members of the community. You don’t need to be a core developer, or even an experi-
enced programmer, to contribute usefully to code review. Even noting that you don’t understand something in a pull
request is valuable feedback and will be taken seriously.
Formal approval
Formal approval means “OK to merge” comments, following review, from at least two different members of the core
team who have expertise in the relevant areas, and excluding the author of the pull request.
The exceptions to this are frontend code and documentation, where one “OK to merge” comment will suffice, at least
until the team has more expert developers in those areas.
Proposal and discussion of significant changes
New features and backward-incompatible changes should be proposed using the django CMS developers email list.
Discussion should take place there before any pull requests are made.
This is in the interests of openness and transparency, and to give the community a chance to participate in and under-
stand the decisions taken by the project.
Release schedule
The roadmap can be found on our website.

We are planning releases according to key principles and aims. Issues within milestones are therefore subject to
change.

The django CMS developers email list serves as gathering point for developers. We submit ideas and proposals prior
to the roadmap goals.
django CMS 3.4 will be the first “LTS” (“Long-Term Support”) release of the application. Long-term support means
that this version will continue to receive security and other critical updates for 24 months after its first release.
Any updates it does receive will be backward-compatible and will not alter functional behaviour. This means that
users can deploy this version confident that keeping it up-to-date requires only easily-applied security and other critical
updates, until the next LTS release.
Branches
Changed in version 3.3: Previously, we maintained a master branch (now deleted), and a set of support branches
(now pruned, and renamed release).
We maintain a number of branches on our GitHub repository.
the latest (highest-numbered) release/x.y.z This is the branch that will become the next release on PyPI.
Fixes and backwards-compatible improvements (i.e. most pull requests) will be made against this branch.
develop This is the branch that will become the next release that increments the x or y of the latest release/x.
y.z.
This branch is for new features and backwards-incompatible changes. By their nature, these will require
more substantial team co-ordination.
Older release/x.y.z branches These represent the final point of development (the highest y of older versions).
Releases in the full set of older versions have been tagged (use Git Tags to retrieve them).
These branches will only rarely be patched, with security fixes representing the main reason for a patch.
Commits in release/x.y.z will be merged forward into develop periodically by the core developers.
If in doubt about which branch to work from, ask on the #django-cms IRC channel on freenode or the django-cms-
developers email list!
Commits
New in version 3.3.
Commit messages
Commit messages and their subject lines should be written in the past tense, not present tense, for example:
Updated contribution policies.
• Updated branch policy to clarify purpose of develop/release branches
• Added commit policy.
• Added changelog policy.
Keep lines short, and within 72 characters as far as possible.

Squashing commits
In order to make our Git history more useful, and to make life easier for the core developers, please rebase and squash
your commit history into a single commit representing a single coherent piece of work.
For example, we don’t really need or want a commit history, for what ought to be a single commit, that looks like
(newest last):
2dceb83 Updated contribution policies.

ffe5f2c Fixed spelling mistake in contribution policies.
29168da Fixed typo.
85d925c Updated commit policy based on feedback.
The bottom three commits are just noise. They don’t represent development of the code base. The four commits
should be squashed into a single, meaningful, commit:
85d925c Updated contribution policies.
How to squash commits
In this example above, you’d use git rebase -i HEAD~4 (the 4 refers to the number of commits being squashed
- adjust it as required).
This will open a git-rebase-todo file (showing commits with the newest last):
pick 2dceb83 Updated contribution policies.

pick ffe5f2c Fixed spelling mistake in contribution policies.
pick 29168da Fixed typo.
pick 85d925c Updated commit policy based on feedback.
“Fixup” the last three commits, using f so that they are squashed into the first, and their commit messages discarded:
pick 2dceb83 Updated contribution policies.

f ffe5f2c Fixed spelling mistake in contribution policies.
f 29168da Fixed typo.
f 85d925c Updated commit policy based on feedback.
Save - and this will leave you with a single commit containing all of the changes:
85d925c Updated contribution policies.
Ask for help if you run into trouble!
Changelog
New in version 3.3.

Every new feature, bugfix or other change of substance must be represented in the CHANGELOG. This includes
documentation, but doesn’t extend to things like reformatting code, tidying-up, correcting typos and so on.
Each line in the changelog should begin with a verb in the past tense, for example:
* Added CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER setting

* Renamed the CMS_WIZARD_* settings to CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_*
* Deprecated the old-style wizard-related settings


* Improved handling of uninstalled apphooks
* Fixed an issue which could lead to an apphook without a slug
* Updated contribution policies documentation
New lines should be added to the top of the list.
Contributing code
Like every open-source project, django CMS is always looking for motivated individuals to contribute to its source
code.
In a nutshell
Here’s what the contribution process looks like in brief:

1. Fork our GitHub repository, https://github.com/divio/django-cms
2. Work locally and push your changes to your repository.
3. When you feel your code is good enough for inclusion, send us a pull request.
See the How to contribute a patch how-to document for a walk-through of this process.
Basic requirements and standards
If you’re interested in developing a new feature for the CMS, it is recommended that you first discuss it on the django-
cms-developers mailing list so as not to do any work that will not get merged in anyway.
• Code will be reviewed and tested by at least one core developer, preferably by several. Other community
members are welcome to give feedback.
• Code must be tested. Your pull request should include unit-tests (that cover the piece of code you’re submitting,
obviously)
• Documentation should reflect your changes if relevant. There is nothing worse than invalid documentation.
• Usually, if unit tests are written, pass, and your change is relevant, then it’ll be merged.
Since we’re hosted on GitHub, django CMS uses git as a version control system.
The GitHub help is very well written and will get you started on using git and GitHub in a jiffy. It is an invaluable
resource for newbies and old timers alike.
Syntax and conventions
Python
We try to conform to PEP8 as much as possible. A few highlights:

• Indentation should be exactly 4 spaces. Not 2, not 6, not 8. 4. Also, tabs are evil.
• We try (loosely) to keep the line length at 79 characters. Generally the rule is “it should look good in a terminal-
base editor” (eg vim), but we try not be too inflexible about it.

HTML, CSS and JavaScript
As of django CMS 3.2, we are using the same guidelines as described in Aldryn Boilerplate
Frontend code should be formatted for readability. If in doubt, follow existing examples, or ask.
JS Linting
JavaScript is linted using ESLint. In order to run the linter you need to do this:
gulp lint
Or you can also run the watcher by just running gulp.
Process
This is how you fix a bug or add a feature:

1. fork us on GitHub.
2. Checkout your fork.
3. Hack hack hack, test test test, commit commit commit, test again.
4. Push to your fork.
5. Open a pull request.
And at any point in that process, you can add: discuss discuss discuss, because it’s always useful for everyone to pass
ideas around and look at things together.
Running and writing tests is really important: a pull request that lowers our testing coverage will only be accepted
with a very good reason; bug-fixing patches must demonstrate the bug with a test to avoid regressions and to check
that the fix works.
We have an IRC channel, our django-cms-developers email list, and of course the code reviews mechanism on GitHub
- do use them.
Frontend
Important: When we refer to the frontend here, we only mean the frontend of django CMS’s admin/editor interface.
The frontend of a django CMS website, as seen by its visitors (i.e. the published site), is wholly independent of this.
django CMS places almost no restrictions at all on the frontend - if a site can be described in HTML/CSS/JavaScript,
it can be developed in django CMS.
In order to be able to work with the frontend tooling contributing to the django CMS you need to have the following
dependencies installed:
1. Node version 6.10.1 (will install npm 3.10.10 as well). We recommend using NVM to get the correct version of
Node.
2. gulp - see Gulp’s Getting Started notes

3. Local dependencies npm install
Styles
We use Sass for our styles. The files are located within cms/static/cms/sass and can be compiled using the
libsass implementation of Sass compiler through gulp.
In order to compile the stylesheets you need to run this command from the repo root:
gulp sass
While developing it is also possible to run a watcher that compiles Sass files on change:
gulp
By default, source maps are not included in the compiled files. In order to turn them on while developing just add the
--debug option:
gulp --debug
Icons
We are using gulp-iconfont to generate icon web fonts into cms/static/cms/fonts/. This also creates
_iconography.scss within cms/static/cms/sass/components which adds all the icon classes and ul-
timately compiles to CSS.
In order to compile the web font you need to run:
gulp icons
This simply takes all SVGs within cms/static/cms/fonts/src and embeds them into the web font. All classes
will be automatically added to _iconography.scss as previously mentioned.
Additionally we created an SVG template within cms/static/cms/font/src/_template.svgz that you
should use when converting or creating additional icons. It is named svgz so it doesn’t get compiled into the font.
When using Adobe Illustrator please mind the following settings.
JS Bundling
JavaScript files are split up for easier development, but in the end they are bundled together and minified to decrease
amount of requests made and improve performance. In order to do that we use the gulp task runner, where bundle
command is available. We use Webpack for bundling JavaScript files. Configuration for each bundle are stored inside
the webpack.config.js and their respective entry points. CMS exposes only one global variable, named CMS. If
you want to use JavaScript code provided by CMS in external applications, you can only use bundles distributed by
CMS, not the source modules.
Contributing documentation
Perhaps considered “boring” by hard-core coders, documentation is sometimes even more important than code! This
is what brings fresh blood to a project, and serves as a reference for old timers. On top of this, documentation is the
one area where less technical people can help most - you just need to write simple, unfussy English. Elegance of style
is a secondary consideration, and your prose can be improved later if necessary.

Contributions to the documentation earn the greatest respect from the core developers and the django CMS community.
Documentation should be:
• written using valid Sphinx/restructuredText syntax (see below for specifics); the file extension should be .rst
• wrapped at 100 characters per line
• written in English, using British English spelling and punctuation
• accessible - you should assume the reader to be moderately familiar with Python and Django, but not anything
else. Link to documentation of libraries you use, for example, even if they are “obvious” to you
Merging documentation is pretty fast and painless.
Except for the tiniest of change, we recommend that you test them before submitting.
Building the documentation
Follow the same steps above to fork and clone the project locally. Next, cd into the django-cms/docs and install
the requirements:
make install
Now you can test and run the documentation locally using:
make run
This allows you to review your changes in your local browser using http://localhost:8001/.
Note: What this does

make install is roughly the equivalent of:
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
cd docs
make html
make run runs make html, and serves the built documentation on port 8001 (that is, at http://
localhost:8001/.
It then watches the docs directory; when it spots changes, it will automatically rebuild the documentation, and refresh
the page in your browser.
Spelling
We use sphinxcontrib-spelling, which in turn uses pyenchant and enchant to check the spelling of the documentation.
You need to check your spelling before submitting documentation.
Important: We use British English rather than US English spellings. This means that we use colour rather than
color, emphasise rather than emphasize and so on.

Install the spelling software
sphinxcontrib-spelling and pyenchant are Python packages that will be installed in the virtualenv docs/
env when you run make install (see above).
You will need to have enchant installed too, if it is not already. The easy way to check is to run make spelling
from the docs directory. If it runs successfully, you don’t need to do anything, but if not you will have to install
enchant for your system. For example, on OS X:
brew install enchant
or Debian Linux:
apt-get install enchant
Check spelling
Run:
make spelling
in the docs directory to conduct the checks.
Note: This script expects to find a virtualenv at docs/env, as installed by make install (see above).
If no spelling errors have been detected, make spelling will report:
build succeeded.
Otherwise:
build finished with problems.

make: *** [spelling] Error 1
It will list any errors in your shell. Misspelt words will be also be listed in build/spelling/output.txt
Words that are not in the built-in dictionary can be added to docs/spelling_wordlist. If you are certain that a
word is incorrectly flagged as misspelt, add it to the spelling_wordlist document, in alphabetical order. Please
do not add new words unless you are sure they should be in there.
If you find technical terms are being flagged, please check that you have capitalised them correctly - javascript
and css are incorrect spellings for example. Commands and special names (of classes, modules, etc) in double
backticks - `` - will mean that they are not caught by the spelling checker.
Important: You may well find that some words that pass the spelling test on one system but not on another. Dictio-
naries on different systems contain different words and even behave differently. The important thing is that the spelling
tests pass on Travis when you submit a pull request.
Making a pull request
Before you commit any changes, you need to check spellings with make spelling and rebuild the docs using
make html. If everything looks good, then it’s time to push your changes to GitHub and open a pull request in the

usual way.
Documentation structure
Our documentation is divided into the following main sections:

• Tutorials (introduction): step-by-step, beginning-to-end tutorials to get you up and running
• How-to guides (how_to): step-by-step guides covering more advanced development
• Key topics (topics): explanations of key parts of the system
• Reference (reference): technical reference for APIs, key models and so on
• Development & community (contributing)
• Release notes & upgrade information (upgrade)
• Using django CMS (user): guides for using rather than setting up or developing for the CMS
Documentation markup
Sections
We mostly follow the Python documentation conventions for section marking:
##########
Page title
##########
*******
heading
*******
sub-heading
===========
sub-sub-heading
---------------
sub-sub-sub-heading
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
sub-sub-sub-sub-heading
"""""""""""""""""""""""
Inline markup
• use backticks - `` - for:

– literals:
The ``cms.models.pagemodel`` contains several important methods.
– filenames:

Before you start, edit ``settings.py``.
– names of fields and other specific items in the Admin interface:

Edit the ``Redirect`` field.
• use emphasis - *Home* - around:

– the names of available options in or parts of the Admin:
To hide and show the *Toolbar*, use the...
– the names of important modes or states:

... in order to switch to *Edit mode*.
– values in or of fields:
Enter *Home* in the field.
• use strong emphasis - ** - around:

– buttons that perform an action:
Hit **View published** or **Save as draft**.
Rules for using technical words
There should be one consistent way of rendering any technical word, depending on its context. Please follow these
rules:
• in general use, simply use the word as if it were any ordinary word, with no capitalisation or highlighting: “Your
placeholder can now be used.”
• at the start of sentences or titles, capitalise in the usual way: “Placeholder management guide”
• when introducing the term for the the first time, or for the first time in a document, you may highlight it to draw
attention to it: “Placeholders are special model fields”.
• when the word refers specifically to an object in the code, highlight it as a literal: “Placeholder methods
can be overwritten as required” - when appropriate, link the term to further reference documentation as well as
simply highlighting it.
References
Create:
.. _testing:
and use:
:ref:`testing`
internal cross-references liberally.

Use absolute links to other documentation pages - :doc:`/how_to/toolbar` - rather than relative links -
:doc:`/../toolbar`. This makes it easier to run search-and-replaces when items are moved in the structure.

Contributing translations
For translators we have a Transifex account where you can translate the .po files and don’t need to install git or
mercurial to be able to contribute. All changes there will be automatically sent to the project.
Code and project management
We use our GitHub project for managing both django CMS code and development activity.
This document describes how we manage tickets on GitHub. By “tickets”, we mean GitHub issues and pull requests
(in fact as far as GitHub is concerned, pull requests are simply a species of issue).
Issues
Raising an issue
Attention: If you think you have discovered a security issue in our code, please report it privately, by emailing
us at security@django-cms.org.
Please do not raise it on:
• IRC
• GitHub
• either of our email lists
or in any other public forum until we have had a chance to deal with it.
Except in the case of security matters, of course, you’re welcome to raise issues in any way that suits you - on one of
our email lists, or the IRC channel or in person if you happen to meet another django CMS developer.
It’s very helpful though if you don’t just raise an issue by mentioning it to people, but actually file it too, and that
means creating a new issue on GitHub.
There’s an art to creating a good issue report.
The Title needs to be both succinct and informative. “show_sub_menu displays incorrect nodes when used with
soft_root” is helpful, whereas “Menus are broken” is not.
In the Description of your report, we’d like to see:
• how to reproduce the problem
• what you expected to happen
• what did happen (a traceback is often helpful, if you get one)
Getting your issue accepted
Other django CMS developers will see your issue, and will be able to comment. A core developer may add further
comments, or a label.
The important thing at this stage is to have your issue accepted. This means that we’ve agreed it’s a genuine issue, and
represents something we can or are willing to do in the CMS.

You may be asked for more information before it’s accepted, and there may be some discussion before it is. It could
also be rejected as a non-issue (it’s not actually a problem) or won’t fix (addressing your issue is beyond the scope of
the project, or is incompatible with our other aims).
Feel free to explain why you think a decision to reject your issue is incorrect - very few decisions are final, and we’re
always happy to correct our mistakes.
How we process tickets
Tickets should be:

• given a status
• marked with needs
• marked with a kind
• marked with the components they apply to
• marked with miscellaneous other labels
• commented
A ticket’s status and needs are the most important of these. They tell us two key things:
• status: what stage the ticket is at
• needs: what next actions are required to move it forward
Needless to say, these labels need to be applied carefully, according to the rules of this system.
GitHub’s interface means that we have no alternative but to use colours to help identify our tickets. We’re sorry about
this. We’ve tried to use colours that will cause the fewest issues for colour-blind people, so we don’t use green (since
we use red) or yellow (since we use blue) labels, but we are aware it’s not ideal.
django CMS ticket processing system rules
• one and only one status must be applied to each ticket

• a healthy ticket (blue) cannot have any critical needs (red)
• when closed, tickets must have either a healthy (blue) or dead (black) status
• a ticket with critical needs must not have non-critical needs or miscellaneous other labels
• has patch and on hold labels imply a related pull request, which must be linked-to when these labels are applied
• component, non-critical need and miscellaneous other labels should be applied as seems appropriate
Status
The first thing we do is decide whether we accept the ticket, whether it’s a pull request or an issue. An accepted status
means the ticket is healthy, and will have a blue label.
Basically, it’s good for open tickets to be healthy (blue), because that means they are going somewhere.
Important: Accepting a ticket means marking it as healthy, with one of the blue labels.
issues The bar for status: accepted is high. The status can be revoked at any time, and should be when
appropriate. If the issue needs a design decision, expert opinion or more info, it can’t be accepted.

pull requests When a pull request is accepted, it should become work in progress or (more rarely) ready
for review or even ready to be merged, in those rare cases where a perfectly-formed and unimprov-
able pull request lands in our laps. As for issues, if it needs a design decision, expert opinion or
more info, it can’t be accepted.
No issue or pull request can have both a blue (accepted) and a red, grey or black label at the
same time.
Preferably, the ticket should either be accepted (blue), rejected (black) or marked as having critical needs (red) as
soon as possible. It’s important that open tickets should have a clear status, not least for the sake of the person who
submitted it so that they know it’s being assessed.
Tickets should not be allowed to linger indefinitely with critical (red) needs. If the opinions or information required
to accept the ticket are not forthcoming, the ticket should be declared unhealthy (grey) with marked for rejection and
rejected (black) at the next release.
Needs
Critical needs (red) affect status.

Non-critical needs labels (pink) can be added as appropriate (and of course, removed as work progresses) to pull
requests.
It’s important that open tickets should have a clear needs labels, so that it’s apparent what needs to be done to make
progress with it.
Kinds and components
Of necessity, these are somewhat porous categories. For example, it’s not always absolutely clear whether a pull
request represents an enhancement or a bug-fix, and tickets can apply to multiple parts of the CMS - so do the best you
can with them.
Other labels
backport, blocker, has patch or easy pickings labels should be applied as appropriate, to healthy (blue) tickets only.
Comments
At any time, people can comment on the ticket, of course. Although only core maintainers can change labels, anyone
can suggest changing a label.
Label reference
Components and kinds should be self-explanatory, but statuses, needs and miscellaneous other labels are clarified
below.

Statuses
A ticket’s status is its position in the pipeline - its point in our workflow.
Every issue should have a status, and be given one as soon as possible. An issue should have only one status applied
to it.
Many of these statuses apply equally well to both issues and pull requests, but some make sense only for one or the
other:
accepted (issues only) The issue has been accepted as a genuine issue that needs to be addressed. Note that it doesn’t
necessarily mean we will do what the issue suggests, if it makes a suggestion - simply that we agree that there
is an issue to be resolved.
non-issue The issue or pull request are in some way mistaken - the ‘problem’ is in fact correct and expected behaviour,
or the problems were caused by (for example) misconfiguration.
When this label is applied, an explanation must be provided in a comment.
won’t fix The issue or pull request imply changes to django CMS’s design or behaviour that the core team consider
incompatible with our chosen approach.
marked for rejection We’ve been unable to reproduce the issue, and it has lain dormant for a long time. Or, it’s a
pull request of low significance that requires more work, and looks like it might have been abandoned. These
tickets will be closed when we make the next release.
work in progress (pull requests only) Work is on-going.
The author of the pull request should include “(work in progress)” in its title, and remove this when they feel
it’s ready for final review.
ready for review (pull requests only) The pull request needs to be reviewed. (Anyone can review and make comments
recommending that it be merged (or indeed, any further action) but only a core maintainer can change the label.)
ready to be merged (pull requests only) The pull request has successfully passed review. Core maintainers should
not mark their own code, except in the simplest of cases, as ready to be merged, nor should they mark any code
as ready to be merged and then merge it themselves - there should be another person involved in the process.
When the pull request is merged, the label should be removed.
Needs
If an issue or pull request lacks something that needs to be provided for it to progress further, this should be marked
with a “needs” label. A “needs” label indicates an action that should be taken in order to advance the item’s status.
Critical needs
Critical needs (red) mean that a ticket is ‘unhealthy’ and won’t be accepted (issues) or work in progress, ready for
review or ready to be merged until those needs are addressed. In other words, no ticket can have both a blue and a red
label.)
more info Not enough information has been provided to allow us to proceed, for example to reproduce a bug or to
explain the purpose of a pull request.
expert opinion The issue or pull request presents a technical problem that needs to be looked at by a member of the
core maintenance team who has a special insight into that particular aspect of the system.

design decision The issue or pull request has deeper implications for the CMS, that need to be considered carefully
before we can proceed further.
Non-critical needs
A healthy (blue) ticket can have non-critical needs:

patch (issues only) The issue has been given a status: accepted, but now someone needs to write the patch to address
it.
tests
docs (pull requests only) Code without docs or tests?! In django CMS? No way!
Other
has patch (issues only) A patch intended to address the issue exists. This doesn’t imply that the patch will be accepted,
or even that it contains a viable solution.
When this label is applied, a comment should cross-reference the pull request(s) containing the patch.
easy pickings An easy-to-fix issue, or an easy-to-review pull request - newcomers to django CMS development are
encouraged to tackle easy pickings tickets.
blocker We can’t make the next release without resolving this issue.
backport Any patch will should be backported to a previous release, either because it has security implications or it
improves documentation.
on hold (pull requests only) The pull request has to wait for a higher-priority pull request to land first, to avoid
complex merges or extra work later. Any on hold pull request is by definition work in progress.
When this label is applied, a comment should cross-reference the other pull request(s).
Running and writing tests
Good code needs tests.

A project like django CMS simply can’t afford to incorporate new code that doesn’t come with its own tests.
Tests provide some necessary minimum confidence: they can show the code will behave as it expected, and help
identify what’s going wrong if something breaks it.
Not insisting on good tests when code is committed is like letting a gang of teenagers without a driving license borrow
your car on a Friday night, even if you think they are very nice teenagers and they really promise to be careful.
We certainly do want your contributions and fixes, but we need your tests with them too. Otherwise, we’d be compro-
mising our codebase.
So, you are going to have to include tests if you want to contribute. However, writing tests is not particularly difficult,
and there are plenty of examples to crib from in the code to help you.
Running tests
There’s more than one way to do this, but here’s one to help you get started:

# create a virtual environment

virtualenv test-django-cms
# activate it
cd test-django-cms/
source bin/activate
# get django CMS from GitHub

git clone git@github.com:divio/django-cms.git
# install the dependencies for testing

# note that requirements files for other Django versions are also provided
pip install -r django-cms/test_requirements/django-X.Y.txt
# run the test suite

# note that you must be in the django-cms directory when you do this,
# otherwise you'll get "Template not found" errors
cd django-cms
python manage.py test
It can take a few minutes to run.

When you run tests against your own new code, don’t forget that it’s useful to repeat them for different versions of
Python and Django.
Problems running the tests
We are working to improve the performance and reliability of our test suite. We’re aware of certain problems, but need
feedback from people using a wide range of systems and configurations in order to benefit from their experience.
Please use the open issue #3684 Test suite is error-prone on our GitHub repository to report such problems.
If you can help improve the test suite, your input will be especially valuable.
OS X users
In some versions of OS X, gettext needs to be installed so that it is available to Django. If you run the tests and
find that various tests in cms.tests.frontend raise errors, it’s likely that you have this problem.
A solution is:
brew install gettext && brew link --force gettext
(This requires the installation of Homebrew)
ERROR: test_copy_to_from_clipboard (cms.tests.frontend.PlaceholderBasicTests)
You may find that a single frontend test raises an error. This sometimes happens, for some users, when the entire suite
is run. To work around this you can invoke the test class on its own:
manage.py test cms.PlaceholderBasicTests
and it should then run without errors.

Advanced testing options
Run manage.py test --help for the full list of advanced options.
Use --parallel to distribute the test cases across your CPU cores.
Use --failed to only run the tests that failed during the last run.
Use --retest to run the tests using the same configuration as the last run.
Use --vanilla to bypass the advanced testing system and use the built-in Django test command.
To use a different database, set the DATABASE_URL environment variable to a dj-database-url compatible value.
Running Frontend Tests
We have two types of frontend tests: unit tests and integration tests. For unit tests we are using Karma as a test runner
and Jasmine as a test framework.
Integration tests run on PhantomJS and are built using CasperJS.
In order to be able to run them you need to install necessary dependencies as outlined in frontend tooling installation
instructions.
Linting runs against the test files as well with gulp tests:lint. In order to run linting continuously, do:
gulp watch
Unit tests
Unit tests can be run like this:
gulp tests:unit
If your code is failing and you want to run only specific files, you can provide the --tests parameter with comma
separated file names, like this:
gulp tests:unit --tests=cms.base,cms.modal
If you want to run tests continuously you can use the watch command:
gulp tests:unit:watch
This will rerun the suite whenever source or test file is changed. By default the tests are running on PhantomJS, but
when running Karma in watch mode you can also visit the server it spawns with an actual browser.
INFO [karma]: Karma v0.13.15 server started at http://localhost:9876/
On Travis CI we are using SauceLabs integration to run tests in a set of different real browsers, but you can opt out of
running them on saucelabs using [skip saucelabs] marker in the commit message, similar to how you would
skip the build entirely using [skip ci].
We’re using Jasmine as a test framework and Istanbul as a code coverage tool.

Integration tests
In order to run integration tests you’ll have to install at least the version of django CMS from the current directory and
djangocms-helper into into your virtualenv. All commands should be run from the root of the repository. If you do not
have virtualenv yet, create and activate it first:
virtualenv env
. env/bin/activate
Then install minimum required dependencies:
pip install -r test_requirements/django-1.8.txt

pip install -e .
Now you’ll be able to run a tests with this command:
gulp tests:integration
The command will start a server, wait for a minute for the migrations to run and will run integration tests against it. It
will use testdb.sqlite as the database. If you want to start with a clean state you could use --clean argument.
Some tests require different server configuration, so it is possible that the server will stop, and another variation will
start with different arguments. Take a look inside testserver.py if you need to customise the test server settings.
While debugging you can use the --tests parameter as well in order to run test suites separately.:
gulp tests:integration --tests=pagetree

gulp tests:integration --tests=loginAdmin,toolbar
If specified tests require different servers they will be grouped to speed things up, so the order might not be the same
as you specify in the argument.
When running locally, it sometimes helps to visualise the tests output. For that you can install casperjs visual debug-
ging utility, and run the tests with additional --visual argument. It will try to communicate with the server and
display the progress of the test, which you then can also rewind.
It might sometimes be useful not to restart the server when creating the tests, for that you can run python
testserver.py with necessary arguments in one shell and gulp tests:integration --no-server in
another. However you would need to clean the state yourself if the test you’ve been writing fails.
Writing tests
Contributing tests is widely regarded as a very prestigious contribution (you’re making everybody’s future work much
easier by doing so). We’ll always accept contributions of a test without code, but not code without a test - which
should give you an idea of how important tests are.
What we need
We have a wide and comprehensive library of unit-tests and integration tests with good coverage.
Generally tests should be:
• Unitary (as much as possible). i.e. should test as much as possible only one function/method/class. That’s the
very definition of unit tests. Integration tests are interesting too obviously, but require more time to maintain
since they have a higher probability of breaking.

• Short running. No hard numbers here, but if your one test doubles the time it takes for everybody to run them,
it’s probably an indication that you’re doing it wrong.
• Easy to understand. If your test code isn’t obvious, please add comments on what it’s doing.
Code of Conduct
Participation in the django CMS project is governed by a code of conduct.

The django CMS community is a pleasant one to be involved in for everyone, and we wish to keep it that way.
Participants are expected to behave and communicate with others courteously and respectfully, whether online or in
person, and to be welcoming, friendly and polite.
We will not tolerate abusive behaviour or language or any form of harassment.
Individuals whose behaviour is a cause for concern will be give a warning, and if necessary will be excluded from
participation in official django CMS channels (email lists, IRC channels, etc) and events. The Django Software
Foundation will also be informed of the issue.
Raising a concern
If you have a concern about the behaviour of any member of the django CMS community, please contact one of the
members of the core development team.
Your concerns will be taken seriously, treated as confidential and investigated. You will be informed, in writing and as
promptly as possible, of the outcome.
4.1.6 Release notes & upgrade information
Some versions of django CMS present more complex upgrade paths than others, and some require you to take action.
It is strongly recommended to read the release notes carefully when upgrading.
It goes without saying that you should backup your database before embarking on any process that makes changes
to your database.
3.6.0 release notes
This release of django CMS concentrates on introducing support for Django 2.0 and Django 2.1 and dropping support
for Django versions lower than 1.11.
What’s new in 3.6.0
Improvements and new features
• introduced support for Django 2.0

• introduced support for Django 2.1
• removed support for Django versions older than 1.11
• added page_title parameter for cms.api.create_page() and cms.api.create_title()
• length restriction for Title.meta_description was moved from model to form. field length was in-
creased to 320 characters.

Removal of deprecated functionality
Previously deprecated functionality has been removed:

• Signal handlers for Page, Title, Placeholder and CMSPlugin models was removed.
• Removed the cms moderator command.
• Removed the translatable content get / set methods from CMSPlugin model.
How to upgrade to 3.6
We assume you are upgrading from django CMS 3.5.

Please make sure that your current database is consistent and in a healthy state, and make a copy of the database
before proceeding further.
Then run:
python manage.py migrate # to ensure that your database is up-to-date with migrations
python manage.py cms fix-tree
Check custom code and third-party applications for use of deprecated or removed functionality or APIs (see above).
Some third-party components may need to be updated.
Install the new version of django CMS from GitHub.
Run:
to apply the new migrations.
Create a new django CMS 3.6 project
On the Divio Cloud
The Divio Cloud offers an easy way to set up django CMS projects. In the Divio Cloud Control Panel, create a new
django CMS project and Deploy it.
Using the django CMS Installer
See our installation guide in the tutorial. However, make sure that you:
• have installed the latest version of django CMS Installer (at least version 1.0.2)
• specify the version to install as develop: djangocms --cms-version=develop mysite
The user name and password will both be admin.
Contributors to this release
• Daniele Procida
• Paulo

• Vadim Sikora
• Paulo Alvarado
• Bartosz Płóciennik
• Katie McLaughlin
• Krzysztof Socha
• Mateusz Kamycki
• Sergey Fedoseev
• Aliaksei Urbanski
• heppstux
• Chematronix
• Frank
• Jacob Rief
• Julz
3.5.3 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fixed TreeNode.DoesNotExist exception raised when exporting and loading database contents via
dumpdata and loaddata.
• Fixed a bug where request.current_page would always be the public page, regardless of the toolbar
status (draft / live). This only affected custom urls from an apphook.
• Removed extra quotation mark from the sideframe button template
• Fixed a bug where structureboard tried to preload markup when using legacy renderer
• Fixed a bug where updates on other tab are not correctly propagated if the operation was to move a plugin in the
top level of same placeholder
• Fixed a bug where xframe options were processed by clickjacking middleware when page was served from
cache, rather then get this value from cache
• Fixed a bug where cached page permissions overrides global permissions
• Fixed a bug where plugins that are not rendered in content wouldn’t be editable in structure board
• Fixed a bug with expanding static placeholder by clicking on “Expand All” button
• Fixed a bug where descendant pages with a custom url would lose the overwritten url on save.
• Fixed a bug where setting the on_delete option on PlaceholderField and PageField fields would
be ignored.
• Fixed a bug when deleting a modal from changelist inside a modal

3.5.2 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug where short-cuts menu entry would stop working after toolbar reload
• Fixed a race condition in frontend code that could lead to sideframe being opened with blank page
• Fixed a bug where the direct children of the homepage would get a leading / character when the homepage was
moved or published.
• Fixed a bug where non-staff user would be able to open empty structure board
• Fixed a bug where a static file from Django admin was referenced that no longer existed in Django 1.9 and up.
• Fixed a bug where the migration 0018 would fail under certain databases.
3.5.1 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug where editing pages with primary keys greater than 999 would throw an exception.
• Fixed a MultipleObjectsReturned exception raised on the page types migration with multiple page
types per site.
• Fixed a bug which prevented toolbar js from working correctly when rendered before toolbar.
• Fixed a bug where CMS would incorrectly highlight plugin content when plugin contains invisible elements
• Fixed a regression where templates which inherit from a template using an {% extends %} tag with a default
would raise an exception.
3.5.0 release notes
This release of django CMS concentrates on usability and user-experience, by improving its responsiveness while
performing editing operations, particularly those that involve updates to plugin trees.
It also continues our move to decouple logical layers in the system. Most significant in this release is the new separation
of the structure board from page rendering, which allows the structure board to be updated without requiring the page
to be re-rendered. This vastly speeds up page editing, especially when dealing with complex plugin structures.
Another significant example is that the Page model has been decoupled from the site navigation hierarchy. The
navigation tree now exists independently, offering further speed advantages, as well as future benefits for development
and extensibility.
Our work to improve separation of concerns can also be seen in the renaming of publishing controls, so that they no
longer refer to specifically to pages. Ultimately, publishing actions could apply to any kind of content, and this is a
step in that direction.

• structure board now decoupled from page rendering

• Page model decoupled from the site navigation
• Page copy between sites
• better behaviour of the language chooser for published/unpublished languages
• improved handling, refactored code for language fallbacks
• improved repr for Page, Title, Placeholder and CMSPlugin models
• generic publishing controls no longer refer to “page”
• improved documentation
Bug Fixes
This release fixes:

• a Page template settings permission issue (failed to check for “Change advanced settings permission”)
• a bug allowing Pages to be pasted without the correct translations for the target site
• a bug that prevented users from seeing the welcome screen when debug is off
• a bug allowing aliased plugins to render even if their host page was unpublished
• a bug where focusing inputs in modal would require two clicks in some browsers
• minor issues with initialisation of interface widgets.
• minor clipboard bugs
Removal of deprecated functionality
Previously deprecated functionality has been removed:

• Menu modules can no longer be named menus.py (use cms_menus.py).
• The cms.utils.django_load.py module has been removed (in favour of standard Django helpers)
• Support for Django Reversion has been removed.
• The urls and menus attributes are no longer supported on CMSApp (apphook) classes. All apphook subclasses
now need a get_urls() method. In addition, if your apphook has a menus attribute, that will need to be
replaced by a get_menus() method.
• Page.revision_id has been removed
• Deprecated content creation wizard settings have been removed.

Backward-incompatible changes
• The home page is no longer automatically the root page in the tree (since there is no longer a page tree). Instead,
the home page is set manually in the page list admin.
• Previously, ordered pages could be obtained via Page.object.order_by('path'); the equivalent is
now Page.object.order_by('node__path').
• Pages are no longer ordered by path. For ordering, use order_by('node__path').
• Pages no longer have a site field. Whereas previously you could use filter(site=id), now use
filter(node__site==id).
• Pages no longer have a parent field. Instead a parent property now returns the new parent_page at-
tribute, which relies on the node tree.
• Never-published pages can no longer have a ‘pending’ publishing state. A data migration, cms/migrations/
0018_pagenode.py, removes this.
• Using self.request.path or self.request.path_info in a CMSToolbar subclass method is no
longer reliable and is discouraged. Instead, use self.toolbar.request_path.
How to upgrade to 3.5
We assume you are upgrading from django CMS 3.4.

Then run:
python manage.py migrate # to ensure that your database is up-to-date with migrations
Check custom code and third-party applications for use of deprecated or removed functionality or APIs (see above).
Some third-party components may need to be updated.
Install the new version of django CMS from GitHub.
Run:
to apply the new migrations.
Create a new django CMS 3.5 project
On the Divio Cloud
The Divio Cloud offers an easy way to set up django CMS projects. In the Divio Cloud Control Panel, create a new
django CMS project and Deploy it.
Using the django CMS Installer
See our installation guide in the tutorial. However, make sure that you:

• have installed the latest version of django CMS Installer (at least version 0.9.8)
• specify the version to install as develop: djangocms --cms-version=develop mysite
The user name and password will both be admin.
Contributors to this release
• Alexander Paramonov
• Andras Gyömrey
• Daniele Procida
• Gianluca Guarini
• Iacopo Spalletti
• Jacob Rief
• Jens Diemer
• Júlio R. Lucchese
• Leon Smith
• Ludwig Hähne
• Mark Walker
• Nicolas PASCAL
• Nina Zakharenko
• Paulo Alvarado
• Robert Stein
• Salmanul Farzy
• Sergey Fedoseev
• Shaun Brady
• Stefan Foulis
• Tim Graham
• Vadim Sikora
• alskgj

3.4.4 release notes
Bug Fixes
Deprecations
Backward incompatible changes
Page methods
The following methods have been removed from the Page model:
• reset_to_live This internal method was removed and replaced with revert_to_live.
Placeholder utilities
Because of a performance issue with placeholder inheritance, we’ve altered the return value for the following internal
placeholder utility functions:
• cms.utils.placeholder._scan_placeholders This will now return a list of Placeholder tag
instances instead of a list of placeholder slot names. You can get the slot name by calling the get_name()
method on the Placeholder tag instance.
• cms.utils.placeholder.get_placeholders This will now return a list of
DeclaredPlaceholder instances instead of a list of placeholder slot names. You can get the slot
name by accessing the slot attribute on the DeclaredPlaceholder instance.
3.4.3 release notes
Security Fixes
• Fixed a security vulnerability in the page redirect field which allowed users to insert JavaScript code.
• Fixed a security vulnerability where the next parameter for the toolbar login was not sanitised and could point
to another domain.
Thanks
Thanks to Mark Walker and Anthony Steinhauser for reporting the security issues.

3.4.2 release notes
django CMS 3.4.2 introduces two key new features: Revert to live for pages, and support for Django 1.10
Revert to live is in fact being reintroduced in a new form following a complete rewrite of our revision handling system,
that was removed in django CMS 3.4 to make possible a greatly-improved new implementation from scratch.
Revert to live is the first step in fully re-implementing revision management on a new basis.
The full set of changes is listed below.
Bug Fixes
• Escaped strings in close_frame JS template.

• Fixed a bug with text-transform styles on inputs affecting CMS login
• Fixed a typo in the confirmation message for copying plugins from a different language
• Fixed a bug which prevented certain migrations from running in a multi-db setup.
• Fixed a regression which prevented the Page model from rendering correctly when used in a raw_id_field.
• Fixed a regression which caused the CMS to cache the toolbar when CMS_PAGE_CACHE was set to True and
an anonymous user had cms_edit set to True on their session.
• Fixed a regression which prevented users from overriding content in an inherited placeholder.
• Fixed a bug affecting Firefox for Macintosh users, in which use of the Command key later followed by Return
would trigger a plugin save.
• Fixed a bug where template inheritance setting creates spurious migration (see #3479)
• Fixed a bug which prevented the page from being marked as dirty (pending changes) when changing the value
of the overwrite url field.
• Fixed a bug where the page tree would not update correctly when a sibling page was moved from left to right or
right to left.
• Added official support for Django 1.10.

• Rewrote manual installation how-to documentation
• Re-introduced the “Revert to live” menu option.
• Added support for django-reversion >= 2 (see #5830)
• Improved the fix-tree command so that it also fixes non-root nodes (pages).
• Introduced placeholder operation signals.
Deprecations
• Removed the deprecated add_url(), edit_url(), move_url(), delete_url(), copy_url()

properties of CMSPlugin model.

• Added a deprecation warning to method render_plugin() in class CMSPlugin.

• Deprecated frontend_edit_template attribute of CMSPluginBase.
• The post_ methods in `PlaceholderAdminMixin have been deprecated in favour of placeholder opera-
tion signals.
Other changes
• Adjusted Ajax calls triggered when performing a placeholder operation (add plugin, etc..) to include a GET
query called cms_path. This query points to the path where the operation originates from.
• Changed CMSPlugin.get_parent_classes() from method to classmethod.
3.4.1 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a regression when static placeholder was uneditable if it was present on the page multiple times
• Removed globally unique constraint for Apphook configs.
• Fixed a bug when keyboard short-cuts were triggered when form fields were focused
• Fixed a bug when shift + space shortcut wouldn’t correctly highlight a plugin in the structure board
• Fixed a bug when plugins that have top-level svg element would break structure board
• Fixed a bug where output from the show_admin_menu_for_pages template tag was escaped in Django
1.9
• Fixed a bug where plugins would be rendered as editable if toolbar was shown but user was not in edit mode.
• Fixed CSS reset issue with short-cuts modal
3.4 release notes
The most significant change in this release is the removal of revision support (i.e. undo/redo/recover functionality on
pages) from the core django CMS. This functionality will be reinstated as an optional addon in due course, but in the
meantime, that functionality is not available.
What’s new in 3.4
• Changed the way CMS plugins are rendered. The HTML div with cms-plugin class is no longer rendered
around every CMS plugin. Instead a combination of template tags and JavaScript is used to add event
handlers and plugin data directly to the plugin markup. This fixes most of the rendering issues caused by the
extra markup.
• Changed asset cache-busting implementation, which is now handled by a path change, rather than the GET
parameter.
• Added the option to copy pages in the page tree using the drag and drop interface.
• Made it possible to use multi-table inheritance for Page/Title extensions.

• Refactored plugin rendering functionality to speed up loading time in both structure and content modes.
• Added a new Shift + Space shortcut to switch between structure and content mode while highlighting the
current plugin, revealing its position.
• Improved keyboard navigation
• Added help modal about available short-cuts
• Added fuzzy matching to the plugin picker.
• Changed the downcast_plugins utility to return a generator instead of a list.
• Fixed a bug that caused an aliased placeholder to show in structure mode.
• Fixed a bug that prevented aliased content from showing correctly without publishing the page first.
• Added help text to an Alias plugin change form when attached to a page to show the content editor where the
content is aliased from.
• Removed revision support from django CMS core. As a result both
CMS_MAX_PAGE_HISTORY_REVERSIONS and CMS_MAX_PAGE_PUBLISH_REVERSIONS settings
are no longer supported, as well as the with_revision parameter in cms.api.create_page and
cms.api.create_title.
• In cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase methods get_child_classes and
get_parent_classes now are implemented as a @classmethod.
Upgrading to 3.4
A database migration is required because the default value of CMSPlugin.position was set to 0 instead of null.
Then run:

Apphooks & Toolbars
As per our deprecation policy we’ve now removed the backwards compatible shim for cms_app.py and
cms_toolbar.py. If you have not done so already, please rename these to cms_apps.py and cms_toolbars.
py.
Permissions
The permissions system was heavily refactored. As a result, several internal functions and methods have been removed
or changed.
Functions removed:
• user_has_page_add_perm
• has_page_add_permission

• has_page_add_permission_from_request
• has_any_page_change_permissions
• has_auth_page_permission
• has_page_change_permission
• has_global_page_permission
• has_global_change_permissions_permission
• has_generic_permission
• load_view_restrictions
• get_any_page_view_permissions
The following methods were changed to require a user parameter instead of a request:
• Page.has_view_permission
• Page.has_add_permission
• Page.has_change_permission
• Page.has_delete_permission
• Page.has_delete_translation_permission
• Page.has_publish_permission
• Page.has_advanced_settings_permission
• Page.has_change_permissions_permission
• Page.has_move_page_permission
These are also deprecated in favour of their counterparts in cms.utils.page_permissions.
To keep consistency with both django CMS permissions and Django permissions, we’ve modified the vanilla permis-
sions system (CMS_PERMISSIONS = False) to require users to have certain Django permissions to perform an
action.
Here’s an overview:
Action Permission required

Add Page Can Add Page & Can Change Page
Change Page Can Change Page
Delete Page Can Change Page & Can Delete Page
Move Page Can Change Page
Publish Page Can Change Page & Can Publish Page
This change will only affect non-superuser staff members.
Warning: If you have a custom Page extension with a configured toolbar, please see the updated example. It
uses the new permission internals.

Manual plugin rendering
We’ve rewritten the way plugins and placeholders are rendered. As a result, if you’re manually rendering plugins and
placeholders you’ll have to adapt your code to match the new rendering mechanism.
To render a plugin programmatically, you will need a context and request object.
Warning: Manual plugin rendering is not a public API, and as such it’s subject to change without notice.
from django.template import RequestContext
def render_plugin(request, plugin):

renderer = ContentRenderer(request)
context = RequestContext(request)
# Avoid errors if plugin require a request object
# when rendering.
context['request'] = request
return renderer.render_plugin(plugin, context)
Like a plugin, to render a placeholder programmatically, you will need a context and request object.
Warning: Manual placeholder rendering is not a public API, and as such it’s subject to change without notice.
from django.template import RequestContext
def render_placeholder(request, placeholder):

renderer = ContentRenderer(request)
context = RequestContext(request)
# Avoid errors if plugin require a request object
# when rendering.
context['request'] = request
content = renderer.render_placeholder(
placeholder,
context=context,
)
return content
3.3 release notes
django CMS 3.3 has been planned largely as a consolidation release, to build on the progress made in 3.2 and pave the
way for the future ones.
The largest major change is dropped support for Django 1.6 and 1.7, and Python 2.6 followed by major code cleanup
to remove compatibility shims.
What’s new in 3.3
• Removed support for Django 1.6, 1.7 and python 2.6

• Changed the default value of CMSPlugin.position to 0 instead of null

• Refactored the language menu to allow for better integration with many languages
• Refactored management commands completely for better consistency
• Fixed “failed to load resource” for favicon on welcome screen
• Changed behaviour of toolbar CSS classes: cms-toolbar-expanded class is only added now when
toolbar is fully expanded and not at the beginning of the animation. cms-toolbar-expanding and
cms-toolbar-collapsing classes are added at the beginning of their respective animations.
• Added unit tests for CMS JavaScript files
• Added frontend integration tests (written with Casper JS)
• Removed frontend integration tests (written with Selenium)
• Added the ability to declare cache expiration periods on a per-plugin basis
• Improved UI of page tree
• Improved UI in various minor ways
• Added a new setting CMS_INTERNAL_IPS for defining a set of IP addresses for which the toolbar will appear
for authorized users. If left unset, retains the existing behaviour of allowing toolbar for authorized users at any
IP address.
• Changed behaviour of sideframe; is no longer resizable, opens to 90% of the screen or 100% on small screens.
• Removed some unnecessary reloads after closing sideframe.
• Added the ability to make pagetree actions work on currently picked language
• Removed deprecated CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE setting
• Introduced the method get_cache_expiration on CMSPluginBase to be used by plugins for declaring
their rendered content’s period of validity.
• Introduced the method get_vary_cache_on on CMSPluginBase to be used by plugins for declaring VARY
headers.
• Improved performance of plugin moving; no longer saves all plugins inside the placeholder.
• Fixed breadcrumbs of recently moved plugin reflecting previous position in the tree
• Refactored plugin adding logic to no longer create the plugin before the user submits the form.
• Improved the behaviour of the placeholder cache
• Improved fix-tree command to sort by position and path when rebuilding positions.
• Fixed several regressions and tree corruptions on page move.
• Added new class method on CMSPlugin requires_parent_plugin
• Fixed behaviour of get_child_classes; now correctly calculates child classes when not configured in the
placeholder.
• Removed internal ExtraMenuItems tag.
• Removed internal PluginChildClasses tag.
• Modified RenderPlugin tag; no longer renders the content.html template and instead just returns the results.
• Added a get_cached_template method to the Toolbar() main class to reuse loaded templates per
request. It works like Django’s cached template loader, but on a request basis.
• Added a new method get_urls() on the appbase class to get CMSApp.urls, to allow passing a page object
to it.

• Changed JavaScript linting from JSHint and JSCS to ESLint

• Fixed a bug when it was possible to drag plugin into clipboard
• Fixed a bug where clearing clipboard was closing any open modal
• Added CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER setting
• Renamed the CMS_WIZARD_* settings to CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_*
• Deprecated the old-style wizard-related settings
• Improved documentation further
• Improved handling of uninstalled apphooks
• Fixed toolbar placement when foundation is installed
• Fixed an issue which could lead to an apphook without a slug
• Fixed numerous frontend issues
• Added contribution policies documentation
• Corrected an issue where someone could see and use the internal placeholder plugin in the structure board
• Fixed a regression where the first page created was not automatically published
• Corrected the instructions for using the delete-orphaned-plugins command
• Re-pinned django-treebeard to >=4.0.1
Upgrading to 3.3
A database migration is required because the default value of CMSPlugin.position was set to 0 instead of null.
Then run:

Deprecation of Old-Style Page Wizard Settings
In this release, we introduce a new naming scheme for the Page Wizard settings that better reflects that they effect the
CMS’s Page Wizards, rather than all wizards. This will also allow future settings for different wizards with a smaller
chance of confusion or naming-collision.
This release simultaneously deprecates the old naming scheme for these settings. Support for the old naming scheme
will be dropped in version 3.5.0.
Action Required
Developers using any of the following settings in their projects should rename them as follows at their earliest conve-
nience.

CMS_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE

CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN
CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY
CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER
The CMS will accept both-schemes until 3.5.0 when support for the old scheme will be dropped. During this transition
period, the CMS prefers the new-style naming if both schemes are used in a project’s settings.
Management commands
Management commands uses now argparse instead of optparse, following the Django deprecation of the latter API.
The commands behaviour has remained untouched.
Detailed changes:
• commands now use argparse subcommand API which leads to slightly different help output and other internal
differences. If you use the commands by using Django’s call_command function you will have to adapt the
command invocation to reflect this.
• some commands have been rename replacing underscores with hyphens for consistency
• all arguments are now non-positional. If you use the commands by using Django’s call_command function
you will have to adapt the command invocation to reflect this.
Signature changes
The signatures of the toolbar methods get_or_create_menu have a new kwarg disabled inserted (not ap-
pended). This was done to maintain consistency with other, existing toolbar methods. The signatures are now:
• cms.toolbar.items.Menu.get_or_create_menu(key, verbose_name,
disabled=False, side=LEFT, position=None)
• cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar.get_or_create_menu(key, verbose_name=None,
disabled=False, side=LEFT, position=None)
It should only affect developers who use kwargs as positional args.
3.2.5 release notes
Note: This release is identical to 3.2.4, but had to be released also as 3.2.4 due to a Python wheel packaging issue.
Bug Fixes
• Fix cache settings

• Fix user lookup for view restrictions/page permissions when using raw id field

• Fixed regression when page couldn’t be copied if CMS_PERMISSION was False

• Fixes an issue relating to uninstalling a namespaced application
• Adds “Can change page” permission
• Fixes a number of page-tree issues the could lead data corruption under certain conditions
• Addresses security vulnerabilities in the render_model template tag that could lead to escalation of privileges or
other security issues.
• Addresses a security vulnerability in the cms’ usage of the messages framework
• Fixes security vulnerabilities in custom FormFields that could lead to escalation of privileges or other security
issues.
Important: This version of django CMS introduces a new setting: CMS_UNESCAPED_RENDER_MODEL_TAGS

with a default value of True. This default value allows upgrades to occur without forcing django CMS users to do
anything, but, please be aware that this setting continues to allow known security vulnerabilities to be present. Due to
this, the new setting is immediately deprecated and will be removed in a near-future release.
To immediately improve the security of your project and to prepare for future releases of django CMS and related
addons, the project administrator should carefully review each use of the render_model template tags provided by
django CMS. He or she is encouraged to ensure that all content which is rendered to a page using this template tag is
cleansed of any potentially harmful HTML markup, CSS styles or JavaScript. Once the administrator or developer is
satisfied that the content is clean, he or she can add the “safe” filter parameter to the render_model template tag if the
content should be rendered without escaping. If there is no need to render the content un-escaped, no further action is
required.
Once all template tags have been reviewed and adjusted where necessary, the administrator should set
CMS_UNESCAPED_RENDER_MODEL_TAGS = False in the project settings. At that point, the project is more
secure and will be ready for any future upgrades.
DjangoCMS Text CKEditor
Action required
CMS 3.2.1 is not compatible with djangocms-text-ckeditor < 2.8.1. If you’re using djangocms-text-ckeditor, please
upgrade to 2.8.1 or later.
3.2.4 release notes
Bug Fixes

• Fix user lookup for view restrictions/page permissions when using raw id field
• Fixed regression when page couldn’t be copied if CMS_PERMISSION was False
• Fixes an issue relating to uninstalling a namespaced application
• Adds “Can change page” permission

• Fixes a number of page-tree issues the could lead data corruption under certain conditions
• Addresses security vulnerabilities in the render_model template tag that could lead to escalation of privileges or
other security issues.
• Addresses a security vulnerability in the cms’ usage of the messages framework
• Fixes security vulnerabilities in custom FormFields that could lead to escalation of privileges or other security
issues.
Important: This version of django CMS introduces a new setting: CMS_UNESCAPED_RENDER_MODEL_TAGS

with a default value of True. This default value allows upgrades to occur without forcing django CMS users to do
anything, but, please be aware that this setting continues to allow known security vulnerabilities to be present. Due to
this, the new setting is immediately deprecated and will be removed in a near-future release.
To immediately improve the security of your project and to prepare for future releases of django CMS and related
addons, the project administrator should carefully review each use of the render_model template tags provided by
django CMS. He or she is encouraged to ensure that all content which is rendered to a page using this template tag is
cleansed of any potentially harmful HTML markup, CSS styles or JavaScript. Once the administrator or developer is
satisfied that the content is clean, he or she can add the “safe” filter parameter to the render_model template tag if the
content should be rendered without escaping. If there is no need to render the content unescaped, no further action is
required.
Once all template tags have been reviewed and adjusted where necessary, the administrator should set
CMS_UNESCAPED_RENDER_MODEL_TAGS = False in the project settings. At that point, the project is more
secure and will be ready for any future upgrades.
Action required
upgrade to 2.8.1 or later.
3.2.3 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fix the display of hyphenated language codes in the page tree

• Fix a family of issues relating to unescaped translations in the page tree
3.2.2 release notes
Improvements
• Substantial “under-the-hood” improvements to the page tree resulting in significant reduction of page-tree
reloads and generally cleaner code

• Update jsTree version to 3.2.1 with slight adaptations to the page tree
• Improve the display and usability of the language menu, especially in cases where there are many languages
• Documentation improvements
Bug Fixes
• Fix an issue relating to search fields in plugins

• Fix an issue where the app-resolver would trigger locales into migrations
• Fix ToolbarMiddleware.is_cms_request logic
• Fix numerous Django 1.9 deprecations
• Numerous other improvements to overall stability and code quality
Model Relationship Back-References and Django 1.9
Django 1.9 is lot stricter about collisions in the related_names of relationship fields than previous versions of
Django. This has brought to light issues in django CMS relating to the private field CMSPlugin.cmsplugin_ptr.
The issue becomes apparent when multiple packages are installed that provide plugins with the same model class
name. A good example would be if you have the package djangocms-file installed, which has a poorly named
CMSPlugin model subclass called File, then any other package that has a plugin with a field named “file” would
most likely cause an issue. Considering that djangocms-file is a very common plugin to use and a field name of
“file” is not uncommon in other plugins, this is less than ideal.
Fortunately, developers can correct these issues in their own projects while they await improvements in django CMS.
There is an internal field that is created when instantiating plugins: CMSPlugin.cmsplugin_ptr. This private
field is declared in the CMSPlugin base class and is populated on instantiation using the lower-cased model name of
the CMSPlugin subclass that is being registered.
A subclass to CMSPlugin can declare their own cmsplugin_ptr field to immediately fix this issue. The easiest
solution is to declare this field with a related_name of “+”. In typical Django fashion, this will suppress the back-
reference and prevent any collisions. However, if the back-reference is required for some reason (very rare), then we
recommend using the pattern %(app_label)s_%(class_name)s. In fact, in version 3.3 of django CMS, this is
precisely the string-template that the reference setup will use to create the name. Here’s an example:
class MyPlugin(CMSPlugin):
class Meta:
app_label = 'my_package'
cmsplugin_ptr = models.OneToOneField(
CMSPlugin,
related_name='my_package_my_plugin',
parent_link=True
)
# other fields, etc.

# ...
Please note that CMSPlugin.cmsplugin_ptr will remain a private field.

Notice of Upcoming Change in 3.3
As outlined in the section immediately above, the pattern currently used to derive a related_name for the private
field CMSPlugin.cmsplugin_ptr may result in frequent collisions. In django CMS 3.3, this string-template will
be changed to utilise both the app_label and the model class name. In the majority of cases, this will not affect
developers or users, but if your project uses these back-references for some reason, please be aware of this change and
plan accordingly.
Treebeard corruption
Prior to 3.2.1 moving or pasting nested plugins could lead to some non-fatal tree corruptions, raising an error when
adding plugins under the newly pasted plugins.
To fix these problems, upgrade to 3.2.1 or later and then run manage.py cms fix-tree command to repair the
tree.
Action required
upgrade to 2.8.1 or up.
3.2.1 release notes
Improvements
• Add support for Django 1.9 (with some deprecation warnings).

• Add support for django-reversion 1.10+ (required by Django 1.9+).
• Add placeholder name to the edit tooltip.
• Add attr['is_page']=True to CMS Page navigation nodes.
• Add Django and Python versions to debug bar info tooltip
Bug Fixes
• Fix an issue with refreshing the UI when switching CMS language.

• Fix an issue with sideframe urls not being remembered after reload.
• Fix breadcrumb in page revision list.
• Fix clash with Foundation that caused “Add plugin” button to be unusable.
• Fix a tree corruption when pasting a nested plugin under another plugin.
• Fix message with CMS version not showing up on hover in debug mode.
• Fix messages not being positioned correctly in debug mode.

• Fix an issue where plugin parent restrictions where not respected when pasting a plugin.
• Fix an issue where “Copy all” menu item could have been clicked on empty placeholder.
• Fix a bug where page tree styles didn’t load from STATIC_URL that pointed to a different host.
• Fix an issue where the side-frame wouldn’t refresh under some circumstances.
• Honour CMS_RAW_ID_USERS in GlobalPagePermissionAdmin.
Prior to 3.2.1 moving or pasting nested plugins would lead to some non-fatal tree corruptions, raising an error when
To fix these problems, upgrade to 3.2.1 and then run manage.py cms fix-tree command to repair the tree.
Action required
upgrade to 2.8.1 or up.
3.2 release notes
django CMS 3.2 introduces touch-screen support, significant improvements to the structure-board, and numerous other
updates and fixes for the frontend. Behind the scenes, auto-reloading following apphook configuration changes will
make life simpler for all users.
Warning: Upgrading from previous versions

3.2 introduces some changes that require action if you are upgrading from a previous version. Please read Up-
grading django CMS 3.1 to 3.2 for a step-by-step guide to the process of upgrading from 3.1 to 3.2.
What’s new in 3.2
• new welcome page to help new users

• touch-screen support for most editing interfaces, for sizes from small tablets to table-top devices
• enhanced and polished user interface
• much-needed improvements to the structure-board
• enhancements to components such as the pop-up plugin editor, sideframe (now called the overlay) and the
toolbar
• significant speed improvements on loading, HTTP requests and file sizes
• restarts are no longer required when changing apphook configurations
• a new content wizard system, adaptable to arbitrary content types

Changes that require attention
Touch interface support
For general information about touch interface support, see the touch screen device notes in the documentation.
Important: These notes about touch interface support apply only to the django CMS admin and editing interfaces.
The visitor-facing published site is wholly independent of this, and the responsibility of the site developer. A good
site should already work well for its visitors, whatever interface they use!
Numerous aspects of the CMS and its interface have been updated to work well with touch-screen devices. There are
some restrictions and warnings that need to be borne in mind.
Device support
Smaller devices such as most phones are too small to be adequately usable. For example, your Apple Watch is sadly
unlikely to provide a very good django CMS editing experience.
Older devices will often lack the performance to support a usefully responsive frontend editing/administration inter-
face.
There are some device-specific issues still to be resolved. Some of these relate to the CKEditor (the default django
CMS text editor). We will continue to work on these and they will be addressed in a future release.
See Device support for information about devices that have been tested and confirmed to work well, and about known
issues affecting touch-screen device support.
Feedback required
We’ve tested the CMS interface extensively, but will be very keen to have feedback from other users - device reports,
bug reports and general suggestions and opinions are very welcome.
Bug-fixes
• An issue in which {% placeholder %} template tags ignored the lang parameter has been fixed.
However this may affect the behaviour of your templates, as now a previously-ignored parameter will be recog-
nised. If you used the lang parameter in these template tags you may be affected: check the behaviour of your
templates after upgrading.
Content wizards
Content creation wizards can help simplify production of content, and can be created to handle non-CMS content too.
For a quick introduction to using a wizard as a content editor, see the user tutorial.
Renaming cms_app, cms_toolbar, menu modules
cms_app.py, cms_toolbar.py and menu.py have been renamed to cms_apps.py, cms_toolbars.py

and cms_menus.py for consistency.

Old names are still supported but deprecated; support will be removed in 3.4.
Action required
In your own applications that use these modules, rename cms_app.py to cms_apps.py, cms_toolbar.py to
cms_toolbars.py and menu.py to cms_menus.py.
New ApphookReloadMiddleware
Until now, changes to apphooks have required a restart of the server in order to take effect. A new optional middleware
class, cms.middleware.utils.ApphookReloadMiddleware, makes this automatic.
For developers
Various improvements have been implemented to make developing with and for django CMS easier. These include:
• improvements to frontend code, to comply better with aldryn-boilerplate-bootstrap3
• changes to directory structure for frontend related components such as JavaScript and SASS.
• We no longer use develop.py; we now use manage.py for all development tasks. See How to contribute a
patch for examples.
• We’ve moved our widgets.py JavaScript to static/cms/js/widgets.
Code formatting
We’ve switched from tabs (in some places) to four spaces everywhere. See Contributing code for more on formatting.
gulp.js
We now use gulp.js for linting, compressing and bundling of frontend files.
Sass-related changes
We now use LibSass rather than Compass for building static files (this only affects frontend developers of django CMS
- contributors to it, not other users or developers). We’ve also adopted CSSComb.
.editorconfig file
We’ve added a .editorconfig (at the root of the project) to provide cues to text editors.
Automated spelling checks for documentation
Documentation is now checked for spelling. A make spelling command is available now when working on
documentation, and our Travis Continuous Integration server also runs these checks.
See the Spelling section in the documentation.

New structure board
The structure board is cleaner and easier to understand. It now displays its elements in a tree, rather than in a series of
nested boxes.
You can optionally enable the old appearance and behaviour with the
CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE setting (this option will be removed in 3.3).
Replaced the sideframe with an overlay
The sideframe that could be expanded and collapsed to reveal a view of the admin and other controls has been replaced
by a simpler and more elegant overlay mechanism.
The API documentation still refers to the sideframe, because it is invoked in the same way, and what has changed
is merely the behaviour in the user’s browser.
In other words, sideframe and the overlay refer to different versions of the same thing.
New startup page
A new startup mode makes it easier for users (especially new users) to dive straight into editing when launching a new
site. See the Tutorial for more.
Known issues
The sub-pages of a page with an apphook will be unreachable (404 page not found), due to internal URL
resolution mechanisms in the CMS. Though it’s unlikely that most users will need sub-pages of this kind (typically,
an apphooked page will create its own sub-pages) this issue will be addressed in a forthcoming release.
Backward-incompatible changes
See the Frontend code documentation.

There are no other known backward-incompatible changes.
Upgrading django CMS 3.1 to 3.2
Please note any changes that require action above, and take action accordingly.
A database migration is required (a new model, UrlconfRevision has been added as part of the apphook reload
mechanism):
Note also that any third-party applications you update may have their own migrations, so as always, before upgrading,
please make sure that your current database is consistent and in a healthy state, and make a copy of the database
Then run:
to migrate.
Otherwise django CMS 3.2 represents a fairly easy upgrade path.

Pending deprecations
In django CMS 3.3:

Django 1.6, 1.7 and Python 2.6 will no longer be supported. If you still using these versions, you are
strongly encouraged to begin exploring the upgrade process to a newer version.
The CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE setting will be removed.
3.1.5 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a tree corruption when pasting a nested plugin under another plugin.
• Improve CMSPluginBase.render documentation
• Fix CMSEditableObject context generation which generates to errors with django-classy-tags 0.7.1
• Fix error in toolbar when LocaleMiddleware is not used
• Move templates validation in app.ready
• Fix ExtensionToolbar when language is removed but titles still exists
• Fix pages menu missing on fresh install 3.1
• Fix incorrect language on placeholder text for redirect field
• Fix PageSelectWidget JS syntax
• Fix redirect when disabling toolbar
• Fix CMS_TOOLBAR_HIDE causes ‘WSGIRequest’ object has no attribute ‘toolbar’
Prior to 3.1.5 moving or pasting nested plugins would lead to some non-fatal tree corruptions, raising an error when
Action required
upgrade to 2.7.1 or up. Keep in mind that djangocms-text-ckeditor >= 2.8 is compatible only with

3.1.4 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a problem in 0010_migrate_use_structure.py that broke some migration paths to Django 1.8
• Fixed fix_tree command
• Removed some warnings for Django 1.9
• Fixed issue causing plugins to move when using scroll bar of plugin menu in Firefox & IE
• Fixed JavaScript error when using PageSelectWidget
• Fixed whitespace markup issues in draft mode
• Added plugin migrations layout detection in tests
• Fixed some treebeard corruption issues
Prior to 3.1.4 deleting pages could lead to some non-fatal tree corruptions, raising an error when publishing, deleting,
or moving pages.
3.1.3 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Add missing migration

• Exclude PageUser manager from migrations
• Fix check for template instance in Django 1.8.x
• Fix error in PageField for Django 1.8
• Fix some Page tree bugs
• Declare Django 1.6.9 dependency in setup.py
• Make sure cache version returned is an int
• Fix issue preventing migrations to run on a new database (django 1.8)
• Fix get User model in 0010 migration
• Fix support for unpublished language pages
• Add documentation for plugins data migration
• Fix getting request in _show_placeholder_for_page on Django 1.8
• Fix template inheritance order

• Fix xframe options inheritance order

• Fix placeholder inheritance order
• Fix language chooser template
• Relax html5lib versions
• Fix redirect when deleting a page
• Correct South migration error
• Correct validation on numeric fields in modal pop-up dialogs
• Exclude scssc from manifest
• Remove unpublished pages from menu
• Remove page from menu items for performance reason
• Fix access to pages with expired ancestors
• Don’t try to modify an immutable QueryDict
• Only attempt to delete cache keys if there are some to be deleted
• Update documentation section
• Cast to int cache version
• Fix extensions copy when using duplicate page/create page type
Thanks
Many thanks community members who have submitted issue reports and especially to these GitHub users who have
also submitted pull requests: basilelegal, gigaroby, ikudryavtsev, jokerejoker, josjevv, tomwardill.
3.1.2 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Fix placeholder cache invalidation under some circumstances

• Update translations
3.1.1 release notes
• Add Django 1.8 support

• Tutorial updates and improvements
• Add copy_site command
• Add setting to disable toolbar for anonymous users

• Add setting to hide toolbar when a URL is not handled by django CMS
• Add editor configuration
Bug Fixes
• Fixed an issue where privileged users could be tricked into performing actions without their knowledge via a
CSRF vulnerability.
• Fix issue with causes menu classes to be duplicated in advanced settings
• Fix issue with breadcrumbs not showing
• Fix issues with show_menu template tags
• Fix an error in placeholder cache
• Fix get_language_from_request if POST and GET exists
• Minor documentation fixes
• Revert whitespace clean-up on flash player to fix it
• Correctly restore previous status of drag bars
• Fix an issue related to “Empty all” Placeholder feature
• Fix plugin sorting in Python 3
• Fix language-related issues when retrieving page URL
• Fix search results number and items alignment in page changelist
• Preserve information regarding the current view when applying the CMS decorator
• Fix errors with toolbar population
• Fix error with watch_models type
• Fix error with plugin breadcrumbs order
• Change the label “Save and close” to “Save as draft”
• Fix X-Frame-Options on top-level pages
• Fix order of which application URLs are injected into urlpatterns
• Fix delete non existing page language
• Fix language fallback for nested plugins
• Fix render_model template tag doesn’t show correct change list
• Fix Scanning for placeholders fails on include tags with a variable as an argument
• Fix handling of plugin position attribute
• Fix for some structureboard issues
• Pin South version to 1.0.2
• Pin html5lib version to 0.999 until a current bug is fixed
• Make shift tab work correctly in sub-menu

Potentially backward incompatible changes
The order in which the applications are injected is now based on the page depth, if you use nested apphooks, you
might want to check that this does not change the behaviour of your applications depending on applications urlconf
greediness.
Thanks
also submitted pull requests: astagi, dirtycoder, doctormo, douwevandermeij, driesdesmet, furiousdave, ldgarcia, maq-
nouch, nikolas, northben, olarcheveque, pa0lin082, peterfarrell, sam-m888, sephii, stefanw, timgraham, vstoykov.
A special thank you to vad and nostalgiaz for their support on Django 1.8 support
A special thank to Matt Wilkes and Sylvain Fankhauser for reporting the security issue.
3.1 release notes
django CMS 3.1 has been planned largely as a consolidation release, to build on the progress made in 3.0 and establish
a safe, solid base for more ambitious work in the future.
In this release we have tried to maintain maximum backwards-compatibility, particularly for third-party applications,
and endeavoured to identify and tidy loose ends in the system wherever possible.

3.1 introduces some changes that require action if you are upgrading from a previous version. Please read Up-
grading django CMS 3.0 to 3.1 for a step-by-step guide to the process of upgrading from 3.0 to 3.1.
What’s new in 3.1
Switch from MPTT to MP
Since django CMS 2.0 we have relied on MPTT (Modified Pre-order Tree Traversal) for efficiently handling tree
structures in the database.
In 3.1, Django MPTT has been replaced by django-treebeard, to improve performance and reliability.
Over the years MPTT has proved not to be fast enough for big tree operations (>1000 pages); tree corruption, because
of transactional errors, has also been a problem.
django-treebeard uses MP (Materialised Path). MP is more efficient and has more error resistance then MPTT. It
should make working with and using django CMS better - faster and reliable.
Other than this, end users should not notice any changes.
Note: User feedback required

We require as much feedback as possible about the performance of django-treebeard in this release. Please let us know
your experiences with it, especially if you encounter any problems.
Note: Backward incompatible change

While most of the low-level interface is very similar between django-mptt and django-treebeard they are not
exactly the same. If any custom code needs to make use of the low-level interfaces of the page or plugins tree, please
see the django-treebeard documentation for information on how to use equivalent calls in django-treebeard.
Note: Handling plugin data migrations

Please check Plugin data migrations for information on how to create migrations compatible with django CMS 3.0
and 3.1
Action required
Run manage.py cms fix-mptt before you upgrade.

Developers who use django CMS will need to run the schema and data migrations that are part of this release. Devel-
opers of third-party applications that relied on the Django MPTT that shipped with django CMS are advised to update
their own applications so that they install it independently.
Dropped support for Django 1.4 and 1.5
Starting from version 3.1, django CMS runs on Django 1.6 (specifically, 1.6.9 and later) and 1.7.
Warning: Django security support

Django 1.6 support is provided as an interim measure only. In accordance with the Django Project’s security
policies, 1.6 no longer receives security updates from the Django Project team. Projects running on Django 1.6
have known vulnerabilities, so you are advised to upgrade your installation to 1.7 or 1.8 as soon as possible.
Action required
If you’re still on an earlier version, you will need to install a newer one, and make sure that your third-party applications
are also up-to-date with it before attempting to upgrade django CMS.
South is now an optional dependency
As Django South is now required for Django 1.6 only, it’s marked as an optional dependency.
Action required
To install South along with django CMS use pip install django-cms[south].
Changes to PlaceholderAdmin.add_plugin
Historically, when a plugin was added to django CMS, a POST request was made to the PlaceholderAdmin.
add_plugin endpoint (and going back into very ancient history before PlaceholderAdmin existed, it was
PageAdmin.add_plugin). This would create an instance of CMSPlugin, but not an instance of the actual

plugin model itself. It would then let the user agent edit the created plugin, which when saved would put the database
back in to a consistent state, with a plugin instance connected to the otherwise empty and meaningless CMSPlugin.
In some cases, “ghost plugins” would be created, if the process of creating the plugin instance failed or were inter-
rupted, for example by the browser window’s being closed.
This would leave orphaned CMSPlugin instances in the database without any data. This could result pages not
working at all, due to the resulting database inconsistencies.
This issue has now been solved. Calling CMSPluginBase.add_plugin with a GET request now serves the form
for creating a new instance of a plugin. Then on submitting that form via POST, the plugin is created in its entirety,
ensuring a consistent database and an end to ghost plugins.
However, to solve it some backwards incompatible changes to non-documented APIs that developers might have
used have had to be made.
CMSPluginBase permission hooks
Until now, CMSPluginBase.has_delete_permission, CMSPluginBase.has_change_permission

and CMSPluginBase.has_add_permission were handled by a single method, which used an undocumented
and unreliable property on CMSPluginBase instances (or subclasses thereof) to handle permission management.
In 3.1, CMSPluginBase.has_add_permission is its own method that implements proper permission checking
for adding plugins.
If you want to work with those APIs, see the Django documentation for more on the permission methods.
CMSPluginBase.get_form
Prior to 3.1, this method would only ever be called with an actual instance available.
As of 3.1, this method will be called without an instance (the obj argument to the method will be None) if the form
is used to add a plugin, rather than editing it. Again, this is in line with how Django’s ModelAdmin works.
If you need access to the Placeholder object to which the plugin will be added, the request object is guaranteed
to have a placeholder_id key in request.GET, which is the primary key of the Placeholder object to
which the plugin will be added. Similarly, plugin_language in request.GET holds the language code of the
plugin to be added.
CMSPlugin.add_view
This method used to never be called, but as of 3.1 it will be. Should you need to hook into this method, you may want
to use the CMSPluginBase.add_view_check_request method to verify that a request made to this view is
valid. This method will perform integrity and permission checks for the GET parameters of the request.
Migrations moved
Migrations directories have been renamed to conform to the new standard layout:
• Django 1.7 migrations: in the default cms/migrations and menus/migrations directories
• South migrations: in the cms/south_migrations and menus/south_migrations directories

Action required
South 1.0.2 or newer is required to handle the new layout correctly, so make sure you have that installed.
If you are upgrading from django CMS 3.0.x running on Django 1.7 you need to remove the old migration path from
MIGRATION_MODULES settings.
Plugins migrations moving process
Core plugins are being changed to follow the new convention for the migration modules, starting with djan-
gocms_text_ckeditor 2.5 released together with django CMS 3.1.
Action required
Check the readme file of each plugin when upgrading to know the actions required.
Structure mode permission
A new Can use Structure mode* permission has been added.

Without this permission, a non-superuser will no longer have access to structure mode. This makes possible a more
strict workflow, in which certain users are able to edit content but not structure.
This change includes a data migration that adds the new permission to any staff user or group with cms.
change_page permission.
Action required
You may need to adjust these permissions once you have completed migrating your database.
Note that if you have existing users in your database, but are installing django CMS and running its migrations for the
first time, you will need to grant them these permissions - they will not acquire them automatically.
Simplified loading of view restrictions in the menu
The system that loads page view restrictions into the menu has been improved, simplifying the queries that are gener-
ated, in order to make it faster.
Note: User feedback required

We require as much feedback as possible about the performance of this feature in this release. Please let us know your
experiences with it, especially if you encounter any problems.
Toolbar API extension
The toolbar API has been extended to permit more powerful use of it in future development, including the use of
“clipboard-like” items.

Per-namespace apphook configuration
django CMS provides a new API to define namespaced Apphook configurations.

Aldryn Apphooks Config has been created and released as a standard implementation to take advantage of this, but
other implementations can be developed.
Improvements to the toolbar user interface
Some minor changes have been implemented to improve the toolbar user interface. The old Draft/Live switch has
been replaced to achieve a more clear distinction between page states, and Edit and Save as draft buttons are now
available in the toolbar to control the page editing workflow.
Placeholder language fallback default to True
language_fallback in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF is True by default.
New template tags
render_model_add_block
The family of render_model template tags that allow Django developers to make any Django model editable in the
frontend has been extended with render_model_add_block, which can offer arbitrary markup as the Edit icon
(rather than just an image as previously).
render_plugin_block
Some user interfaces have some plugins hidden from display in edit/preview mode. render_plugin_block
provides a way to expose them for editing, and also more generally provides an alternative means of triggering a
plugin’s change form.
Plugin table naming
Old-style plugin table names (for example, cmsplugin_<plugin name> are no longer supported. Relevant code
has been removed.
Action required
Any plugin table name must be migrated to the standard (<application name>_<table name> layout.
cms.context_processors.media replaced by cms.context_processors.cms_settings
Action required
Replace the cms.context_processors.media with cms.context_processors.cms_settings in

settings.py.

Upgrading django CMS 3.0 to 3.1
Preliminary steps
Before upgrading, please make sure that your current database is consistent and in a healthy state.
To ensure this, run two commands:
• python manage.py cms delete_orphaned_plugins
• python manage.py cms fix-mptt
Make a copy of the database before proceeding further.
Settings update
• Change cms.context_processors.media to cms.context_processors.cms_settings in

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS.
• Add treebeard to INSTALLED_APPS, and remove mptt if not required by other applications.
• If using Django 1.7 remove cms and menus from MIGRATION_MODULES to support the new migration
layout.
• If migrating from Django 1.6 and below to Django 1.7, remove south from installed_apps.
• Eventually set language_fallback to False in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF if you do not want language
fallback behaviour for placeholders.
Update the database
• Rename plugin table names, to conform to the new naming scheme (see above). Be warned that not all third-
party plugin applications may provide these migrations - in this case you will need to rename the table manually.
Following the upgrade, django CMS will look for the tables for these plugins under their new name, and will
report that they don’t exist if it can’t find them.
• The migration for MPTT to django-treebeard is handled by the django CMS migrations, thus apply
migrations to update your database:
3.0.16 release notes
Bug-fixes
• Fixed JavaScript error when using PageSelectWidget

• Fixed whitespace markup issues in draft mode
• Added plugin migrations layout detection in tests

Bug Fixes
• Relax html5lib versions

• Fix redirect when deleting a page
• Correct South migration error
• Correct validation on numeric fields in modal pop-up dialogs
• Exclude scssc from manifest
• Remove unpublished pages from menu
• Remove page from menu items for performance reason
• Fix access to pages with expired ancestors
• Don’t try to modify an immutable QueryDict
• Only attempt to delete cache keys if there are some to be deleted
• Update documentation section
• Cast to int cache version
• Fix extensions copy when using duplicate page/create page type
Thanks
also submitted pull requests: basilelegal.
Bug Fixes
• Fixed an issue where privileged users could be tricked into performing actions without their knowledge via a
CSRF vulnerability.
• Fix issue with causes menu classes to be duplicated in advanced settings
• Fix issue with breadcrumbs not showing
• Fix issues with show_menu template tags
• Minor documentation fixes
• Fix an issue related to “Empty all” Placeholder feature
• Fix plugin sorting in Python 3
• Fix search results number and items alignment in page changelist

• Preserve information regarding the current view when applying the CMS decorator
• Fix X-Frame-Options on top-level pages
• Fix order of which application URLs are injected into urlpatterns
• Fix delete non existing page language
• Fix language fallback for nested plugins
• Fix render_model template tag doesn’t show correct change list
• Fix Scanning for placeholders fails on include tags with a variable as an argument
• Pin South version to 1.0.2
• Pin html5lib version to 0.999 until a current bug is fixed
Potentially backward incompatible changes
The order in which the applications are injected is now based on the page depth, if you use nested apphooks, you
might want to check that this does not change the behaviour of your applications depending on applications urlconf
greediness.
Thanks
also submitted pull requests: douwevandermeij, furiousdave, nikolas, olarcheveque, sephii, vstoykov.
A special thank to Matt Wilkes and Sylvain Fankhauser for reporting the security issue.
Bug Fixes
• Numerous documentation including installation and tutorial updates

• Numerous improvements to translations
• Improves reliability of apphooks
• Improves reliability of Advanced Settings on page when using apphooks
• Allow page deletion after template removal
• Improves upstream caching accuracy
• Improves CMSAttachMenu registration
• Improves handling of mis-typed URLs
• Improves redirection as a result of changes to page slugs, etc.
• Improves performance of “watched models”
• Improves frontend performance relating to re-sizing the sideframe

• Corrects an issue where items might not be visible in structure mode menus
• Limits version of django-mptt used in CMS for 3.0.x
• Prevent accidental upgrades to Django 1.8, which is not yet supported
also submitted pull requests: elpaso, jedie, jrief, jsma, treavis.
Bug Fixes
• Fixes a regression caused by extra whitespace in JavaScript
• Core support for multiple instances of the same apphooked application

• The template tag render_model_add can now accept a model class as well as a model instance
Bug Fixes
• Fixes an issue with reverting to Live mode when moving plugins

• Fixes a missing migration issue
• Fixes an issue when using the PageField widget
• Fixes an issue where duplicate page slugs is not prevented in some cases
• Fixes an issue where copying a page didn’t copy its extensions
• Fixes an issue where translations where broken when operating on a page
• Fixes an edge-case SQLite issue under Django 1.7
• Fixes an issue where a confirmation dialog shows only some of the plugins to be deleted when using the “Empty
All” context-menu item
• Fixes an issue where deprecated mimetype was used instead of contenttype
• Fixes an issue where cms check erroneous displays warnings when a plugin uses class inheritance
• Documentation updates
Other
• Updated test CI coverage

• Improved Python 3 compatibility

• Improved the behaviour when changing the operator’s language
• Numerous documentation updates
Bug Fixes
• Revert a change that caused an issue with saving plugins in some browsers
• Fix an issue where URLs were not refreshed when a page slug changes
• Fix an issue with FR translations
• Fixed an issue preventing the correct rendering of custom contextual menu items for plugins
• Fixed an issue relating to recovering deleted pages
• Fixed an issue that caused the uncached placeholder tag to display cached content
• Fixed an issue where extra slashed would appear in apphooked URLs when APPEND_SLASH=False
• Fixed issues relating to the logout function
3.0.9 release notes
Bug Fixes
• Revert a change that caused a regression in toolbar login

• Fix an error in a translated phrase
• Fix error when moving items in the page tree
3.0.8 release notes
• Add require_parent option to CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF
Bug Fixes
• Fix django-mptt version dependency to be PEP440 compatible

• Fix some Django 1.4 compatibility issues
• Add toolbar sanity check
• Fix behaviour with CMSPluginBase.get_render_template()
• Fix issue on django >= 1.6 with page form fields.

• Resolve jQuery namespace issues in admin page tree and change form
• Fix issues for PageField in Firefox/Safari
• Fix some Python 3.4 compatibility issue when using proxy modules
• Fix corner case in plugin copy
• Documentation fixes
• Minor code clean-ups
Warning: Fix for plugin copy patches a reference leak in cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin.

copy_plugins, which caused the original plugin object to be modified in memory. The fixed code leaves
the original unaltered and returns a modified copy.
Custom plugins that called cms.utils.plugins.copy_plugins_to or cms.models.pluginmodel.
CMSPlugin.copy_plugins may have relied on the incorrect behaviour. Check your code for calls to these
methods. Correctly implemented calls should expect the original plugin instance to remain unaltered.
3.0.7 release notes
• Numerous updates to the documentation

• Numerous updates to the tutorial
• Updates to better support South 1.0
• Adds some new, user-facing documentation
Bug Fixes
• Fixes an issue with placeholderadmin permissions

• Numerous fixes for minor issues with the frontend UI
• Fixes issue where the CMS would not reload pages properly if the URL contained a # symbol
• Fixes an issue relating to limit_choices_to in forms.MultiValueFields
• Fixes PageField to work in Django 1.7 environments
Project & Community Governance
• Updates to community and project governance documentation

• Added list of retired core developers
• Added branch policy documentation

3.0.6 release notes
Django 1.7 support
As of version 3.0.6 django CMS supports Django 1.7.

Currently our migrations for Django 1.7 are in cms/migrations_django to allow better backward compatibil-
ity; in future releases the Django migrations will be moved to the standard migrations directory, with the South
migrations in south_migrations.
To support the current arrangement you need to add the following to your settings:
MIGRATION_MODULES = {
'cms': 'cms.migrations_django',
'menus': 'menus.migrations_django',
}
Warning: Applications migrations

Any application that defines a django CMS plugin or a model that uses a PlaceholderField or depends in any way
on django CMS models must also provide Django 1.7 migrations.
Extended Custom User Support
If you are using custom user models and use CMS_PERMISSION = True then be sure to check that
PageUserAdmin and PageUserGroup is still in working order.
The PageUserAdmin class now extends dynamically from the admin class that handles the user model. This allows
us to use the same search_fields and filters in PageUserAdmin as in the custom user model admin.
CMSPlugin.get_render_template
A new method on plugins, that returns the template during the render phase, allowing you to change the template based
on any plugin attribute or context status. See How to create Plugins for more.
Simplified toolbar API for page extensions
A simpler, more compact way to extend the toolbar for page extensions: Simplified Toolbar API.
3.0.3 release notes
New Alias Plugin
A new Alias plugin has been added. You will find in your plugins and placeholders context menu in structure mode a
new entry called “Create alias”. This will create a new Alias plugin in the clipboard with a reference to the original. It
will render this original plugin/placeholder instead. This is useful for content that is present in more then one place.

New Context Menu API
Plugins can now change the context menus of placeholders and plugins. For more details have a look at the docs:
Extending context menus of placeholders or plugins
Apphook Permissions
Apphooks have now by default the same permissions as the page they are attached to. This means if a page has for
example a login required enabled all views in the apphook will have the same behaviour.
Docs on how to disable or customise this behaviour have a look here:
Managing permissions on apphooks
3.0 release notes
What’s new in 3.0

3.0 introduces some changes that require action if you are upgrading from a previous version.
Note: See the quick upgrade guide
New Frontend Editing
django CMS 3.0 introduces a new frontend editing system as well as a customisable Django admin skin (djan-
gocms_admin_style).
In the new system, Placeholders and their plugins are no longer managed in the admin site, but only from the
frontend.
In addition, the system now offer two editing views:
• content view, for editing the configuration and content of plugins.
• structure view, in which plugins can be added and rearranged.
Page titles can also be modified directly from the frontend.
New Toolbar
The toolbar’s code has been simplified and its appearance refreshed. The toolbar is now a more consistent management
tool for adding and changing objects. See How to extend the Toolbar.

3.0 now requires the django.contrib.messages application for the toolbar to work.

New Page Types
You can now save pages as page types. If you then create a new page you may select a page type and all plugins and
contents will be pre-filled.
Experimental Python 3.3 support
We’ve added experimental support for Python 3.3. Support for Python 2.5 has been dropped.
Better multilingual editing
Improvements in the django CMS environment for managing a multi-lingual site include:
• a built-in language chooser for languages that are not yet public.
• configurable behaviour of the admin site’s language when switching between languages of edited content.
CMS_SEO_FIELDS
The setting has been removed, along with the SEO fieldset in admin.
• meta_description field’s max_length is now 155 for optimal Google integration.
• page_title is default on top.
• meta_keywords field has been removed, as it no longer serves any purpose.
CMS_MENU_TITLE_OVERWRITE
New default for this setting is True.
Plugin fallback languages
It’s now possible to specify fallback languages for a placeholder if the placeholder is empty for the current language.
This must be activated in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF per placeholder. It defaults to False to maintain pre-3.0
behaviour.
language_chooser
The language_chooser template tag now only displays languages that are public. Use the toolbar language
chooser to change the language to non-public languages.
Undo and Redo
If you have django-reversion installed you now have undo and redo options available directly in the toolbar.
These can now revert plugin content as well as page content.

Plugins removed
We have removed plugins from the core. This is not because you are not expected to use them, but because django
CMS should not impose unnecessary choices about what to install upon its adopters.
The most significant of these removals is cms.plugins.text.
We provide djangocms-text-ckeditor, a CKEditor-based Text Plugin. It’s available from https://github.com/
divio/djangocms-text-ckeditor. You may of course use your preferred editor; others are available.
Furthermore, we removed the following plugins from the core and moved them into separate repositories.
Note: In order to update from the old cms.plugins.X to the new djangocms_X plugins, simply install the new
plugin, remove the old cms.plugins.X from settings.INSTALLED_APPS and add the new one to it. Then
run the migrations (python manage.py migrate djangocms_X).
File Plugin
We removed the file plugin (cms.plugins.file). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-file
As an alternative, you could also use the following (yet you will not be able to keep your existing files from the old
cms.plugins.file!)
• https://github.com/divio/django-filer
Flash Plugin
We removed the flash plugin (cms.plugins.flash). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-flash
Googlemap Plugin
We removed the Googlemap plugin (cms.plugins.googlemap). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-googlemap
Inherit Plugin
We removed the inherit plugin (cms.plugins.inherit). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-inherit
Picture Plugin
We removed the picture plugin (cms.plugins.picture). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-picture

Teaser Plugin
We removed the teaser plugin (cms.plugins.teaser). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-teaser
Video Plugin
We removed the video plugin (cms.plugins.video). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-video
Link Plugin
We removed the link plugin (cms.plugins.link). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-link
Snippet Plugin
We removed the snippet plugin (cms.plugins.snippet). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-snippet
As an alternative, you could also use the following (yet you will not be able to keep your existing files from the old
cms.plugins.snippet!)
• https://github.com/pbs/django-cms-smartsnippets
Twitter Plugin
Twitter disabled V1 of their API, thus we’ve removed the twitter plugin (cms.plugins.twitter) completely.
For alternatives have a look at these plugins:
• https://github.com/nephila/djangocms_twitter
• https://github.com/changer/cmsplugin-twitter
Plugin Context Processors take a new argument
Plugin Context have had an argument added so that the rest of the context is available to them. If you have existing
plugin context processors you will need to change their function signature to add the extra argument.
Apphooks
Apphooks have moved from the title to the page model. This means you can no longer have separate apphooks for
each language. A new application instance name field has been added.
Note: The reverse id is not used for the namespace any more. If you used namespaced apphooks before, be sure to
update your pages and fill out the namespace fields.

If you use apphook apps with app_name for app namespaces, be sure to fill out the instance namespace field
application instance name as it’s now required to have a namespace defined if you use app namespaces.
For further reading about application namespaces, please refer to the Django documentation on the subject at https:
//docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#url-namespaces
request.current_app has been removed. If you relied on this, use the following code instead in your views:
def my_view(request):
current_app = resolve(request.path_info).namespace
context = RequestContext(request, current_app=current_app)
return render_to_response("my_templace.html", context_instance=context)
Details can be found in Attaching an application multiple times.
PlaceholderAdmin
PlaceholderAdmin now is deprecated. Instead of deriving from admin.ModelAdmin, a new mixin class
PlaceholderAdminMixin has been introduced which shall be used together with admin.ModelAdmin. There-
fore when defining a model admin class containing a placeholder, now add PlaceholderAdminMixin to the list
of parent classes, together with admin.ModelAdmin.
PlaceholderAdmin doesn’t have language tabs any more and the plugin editor is gone. The plugin API has
changed and is now more consistent. PageAdmin uses the same API as PlaceholderAdminMixin now. If
your app talked with the Plugin API directly be sure to read the code and the changed parameters. If you use
PlaceholderFields you should add the mixin PlaceholderAdminMixin as it delivers the API for edit-
ing the plugins and the placeholders.
The workflow in the future should look like this:
1. Create new model instances via a toolbar entry or via the admin.
2. Go to the view that represents the model instance and add content via frontend editing.
Placeholder object permissions
In addition to model level permissions, Placeholder now checks if a user has permissions on a specific object of
that model. Details can be found here in Permissions.
Placeholders are pre-fillable with default plugins
In CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF, for each placeholder configuration, you can specify via ‘default_plugins’ a list of
plugins to automatically add to the placeholder if empty. See default_plugins in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF.
Custom modules and plugin labels in the toolbar UI
It’s now possible to configure module and plugins labels to show in the toolbar UI. See CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF
for details.
New copy-lang subcommand
Added a management command to copy content (titles and plugins) from one language to another.

The command can be run with:
manage.py cms copy_lang from_lang to_lang
Please read cms copy lang before using.
Frontend editor for Django models
Frontend editor is available for any Django model; see documentation for details.
New Page related_name to Site
The Page object used to have the default related_name (page) to the Site model which may cause clashing
with other Django apps; the related_name is now djangocms_pages.
Warning: Potential backward incompatibility

This change may cause you code to break, if you relied on Site.page_set to access cms pages from a Site
model instance: update it to use Site.djangocms_pages
Moved all template tags to cms_tags
All template tags are now in the cms_tags namespace so to use any cms template tags you can just do:
{% load cms_tags %}
getter and setter for translatable plugin content
A plugin’s translatable content can now be read and set through get_translatable_content() and
set_translatable_content(). See Custom Plugins for more info.
No more DB table-name magic for plugins
Since django CMS 2.0 plugins had their table names start with cmsplugin_. We removed this behaviour in 3.0 and will
display a deprecation warning with the old and new table name. If your plugin uses south for migrations create a new
empty schema migration and rename the table by hand.
Warning: When working in the django shell or coding at low level, you must trigger the backward compatible
behaviour (a.k.a. magical rename checking), otherwise non migrated plugins will fail. To do this execute the
following code:
>>> from cms.plugin_pool import plugin_pool
>>> plugin_pool.set_plugin_meta()
This code can be executed both in the shell or in your python modules.

Added support for custom user models
Since Django 1.5 it has been possible to swap out the default User model for a custom user model. This is now fully
supported by DjangoCMS, and in addition a new option has been added to the test runner to allow specifying the user
model to use for tests (e.g. --user=customuserapp.User)
Page caching
Pages are now cached by default. You can disable this behaviour with CMS_PAGE_CACHE
Placeholder caching
Plugins have a new default property: cache=True. If all plugins in a placeholder have set this to True the whole
placeholder will be cached if the toolbar is not in edit mode.
Warning: If your plugin is dynamic and processes current user or request data be sure to set cache=False
Plugin caching
Plugins have a new attribute: cache=True. Its default value can be configured with CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE.
Per-page Clickjacking protection
An advanced option has been added which controls, on a per-page basis, the X-Frame-Options header. The default
setting is to inherit from the parent page. If no ancestor specifies a value, no header will be set, allowing Django’s own
middleware to handle it (if enabled).
CMS_TEMPLATE context variable
A new CMS_TEMPLATE variable is now available in the context: it contains the path to the current page template. See
CMS_TEMPLATE reference for details.
Upgrading from 2.4
Note: There are reports that upgrading the CMS from 2.4 to 3.0 may fail if Django Debug Toolbar is installed. Please
remove/disable Django Debug Toolbar and other non-essential apps before attempting to upgrade, then once complete,
re-enable them following the “Explicit setup” instructions.
If you want to upgrade from version 2.4 to 3.0, there’s a few things you need to do. Start of by updating the cms’
package:
pip install django-cms==3.0
Next, you need to make the following changes in your settings.py

• settings.INSTALLED_APPS

– Remove cms.plugin.twitter. This package has been deprecated, see Twitter Plugin.
– Rename all the other cms.plugins.X to djangocms_X, see Plugins removed.
• settings.CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
– Replace cms.context_processors.media with cms.context_processors.
cms_settings
Afterwards, install all your previously renamed ex-core plugins (djangocms-whatever). Here’s a full list, but
you probably don’t need all of them:
pip install djangocms-file

pip install djangocms-flash
pip install djangocms-googlemap
pip install djangocms-inherit
pip install djangocms-picture
pip install djangocms-teaser
pip install djangocms-video
pip install djangocms-link
pip install djangocms-snippet
Also, please check your templates to make sure that you haven’t put the {% cms_toolbar %} tag into a {%
block %} tag. This is not allowed in 3.0 any more.
To finish up, please update your database:
python manage.py syncdb

python manage.py migrate (answer yes if your prompted to delete stale content types)
Finally, your existing pages will be unpublished, so publish them with the publisher command:
python manage.py publisher_publish
That’s it!
placeholder_tags
placeholder_tags is now deprecated, the render_placeholder template tag can now be loaded from the
cms_tags template tag library.
Using placeholder_tags will cause a DeprecationWarning to occur.
placeholder_tags will be removed in version 3.1.
cms.context_processors.media
cms.context_processors.media is now deprecated, please use cms.context_processors.

cms_settings by updating TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS in the settings
Using cms.context_processors.media will cause a DeprecationWarning to occur.
cms.context_processors.media will be removed in version 3.1.

2.4 release notes
What’s new in 2.4

2.4 introduces some changes that require action if you are upgrading from a previous version.
You will need to read the sections Migrations overhaul and Added a check command below.
Introducing Django 1.5 support, dropped support for Django 1.3 and Python 2.5
Django CMS 2.4 introduces Django 1.5 support.

In django CMS 2.4 we dropped support for Django 1.3 and Python 2.5. Django 1.4 and Python 2.6 are now the
minimum required versions.
Migrations overhaul
In version 2.4, migrations have been completely rewritten to address issues with newer South releases.
To ease the upgrading process, all the migrations for the cms application have been consolidated into a single migration
file, 0001_initial.py.
• migration 0001 is a real migration, that gets you to the same point migrations 0001-0036 used to
• the migrations 0002 to 0036 inclusive still exist, but are now all dummy migrations
• migrations 0037 and later are new migrations
How this affects you
If you’re starting with a new installation, you don’t need to worry about this. Don’t even bother reading this section;
it’s for upgraders.
If you’re using version 2.3.2 or newer, you don’t need to worry about this either.
If you’re using version 2.3.1 or older, you will need to run a two-step process.
First, you’ll need to upgrade to 2.3.3, to bring your migration history up-to-date with the new scheme. Then you’ll
need to perform the migrations for 2.4.
For the two-step upgrade process do the following in your project main directory:
pip install django-cms==2.3.3
pip install django-cms==2.4
Added delete orphaned plugins command
Added a management command for deleting orphaned plugins from the database.

manage.py cms delete_orphaned_plugins
Please read cms delete-orphaned-plugins before using.
Added a check command
Added a management command to check your configuration and environment.

To use this command, simply run:
manage.py cms check
This replaces the old at-runtime checks.
CMS_MODERATOR
Has been removed since it is no longer in use. From 2.4 onward, all pages exist in a public and draft version. Users
with the publish_page permission can publish changes to the public site.
Management command required

To bring a previous version of your site’s database up-to-date, you’ll need to run manage.py cms moderator
on. Never run this command without first checking for orphaned plugins, using the cms list plugins
command. If it reports problems, run manage.py cms delete_orphaned_plugins. Running cms
moderator with orphaned plugins will fail and leave bad data in your database. See cms list and cms delete-
orphaned-plugins.
Also, check that all your plugins define a copy_relations() method if required. You can do this by running
manage.py cms check and read the Presence of “copy_relations” section. See Handling Relations for guidance
on this topic.
Added Fix MPTT Management command
Added a management command for fixing MPTT tree data.

manage.py cms fix-mptt
Removed the MultilingualMiddleware
We removed the MultilingualMiddleware. This removed rather some unattractive monkey-patching of the
reverse() function as well. As a benefit we now support localisation of URLs and apphook URLs with standard
Django helpers.
For django 1.4 more information can be found here:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/i18n/translation/#internationalization-in-url-patterns
If you are still running django 1.3 you are able to achieve the same functionality with django-i18nurl. It is a backport
of the new functionality in django 1.4 and can be found here:
https://github.com/brocaar/django-i18nurls

What you need to do:

• Remove cms.middleware.multilingual.MultilingualURLMiddleware from your settings.
• Be sure django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware is in your settings, and that it comes after
the SessionMiddleware.
• Be sure that the cms.urls is included in a i18n_patterns:
from django.conf.urls import *

from django.conf.urls.i18n import i18n_patterns
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = i18n_patterns('',
url(r'âdmin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
url(r'', include('django.contrib.staticfiles.urls')),
) + urlpatterns
• Change your url and reverse calls to language namespaces. We now support the django way of calling other
language urls either via {% language %} template tag or via activate("de") function call in views.
Before:
{% url "de:myview" %}
After:
{% load i18n %}{% language "de" %}

{% url "myview_name" %}
{% endlanguage %}
• reverse urls now return the language prefix as well. So maybe there is some code that adds language prefixes.
Remove this code.
Added LanguageCookieMiddleware
To fix the behaviour of django to determine the language every time from new, when you visit / on a page, this
middleware saves the current language in a cookie with every response.
To enable this middleware add the following to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting:
cms.middleware.language.LanguageCookieMiddleware
CMS_LANGUAGES
CMS_LANGUAGES has be overhauled. It is no longer a list of tuples like the LANGUAGES settings.
An example explains more than thousand words:

CMS_LANGUAGES = {
1: [
{
'code': 'en',
'name': gettext('English'),
'fallbacks': ['de', 'fr'],
'public': True,
'hide_untranslated': True,
'redirect_on_fallback':False,
},
{
'code': 'de',
'name': gettext('Deutsch'),
'fallbacks': ['en', 'fr'],
'public': True,
},
{
'code': 'fr',
'name': gettext('French'),
'public': False,
},
],
2: [
{
'code': 'nl',
'name': gettext('Dutch'),
'public': True,
'fallbacks': ['en'],
},
],
'default': {
'fallbacks': ['en', 'de', 'fr'],
'redirect_on_fallback':True,
'public': False,
'hide_untranslated': False,
}
}
For more details on what all the parameters mean please refer to the CMS_LANGUAGES docs.
The following settings are not needed any more and have been removed:
• CMS_HIDE_UNTRANSLATED
• CMS_LANGUAGE_FALLBACK
• CMS_LANGUAGE_CONF
• CMS_SITE_LANGUAGES
• CMS_FRONTEND_LANGUAGES
Please remove them from your settings.py.
CMS_FLAT_URLS
Was marked deprecated in 2.3 and has now been removed.

Plugins in Plugins
We added the ability to have plugins in plugins. Until now only the TextPlugin supported this. For demonstration
purposes we created a MultiColumn Plugin. The possibilities for this are endless. Imagine: StylePlugin, TablePlugin,
GalleryPlugin etc.
The column plugin can be found here:
https://github.com/divio/djangocms-column
At the moment the limitation is that plugins in plugins is only editable in the frontend.
Here is the MultiColumn Plugin as an example:
class MultiColumnPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
model = MultiColumns
name = _("Multi Columns")
render_template = "cms/plugins/multi_column.html"
allow_children = True
child_classes = ["ColumnPlugin"]
There are 2 new properties for plugins:

allow_children
Boolean If set to True it allows adding Plugins.
child_classes
List A List of Plugin Classes that can be added to this plugin. If not provided you can add all plugins that are available
in this placeholder.
How to render your child plugins in the template
We introduce a new template tag in the cms_tags called {% render_plugin %} Here is an example of how the
MultiColumn plugin uses it:
{% load cms_tags %}
<div class="multicolumn">
{% for plugin in instance.child_plugins %}
{% endfor %}
</div>
As you can see the children are accessible via the plugins children attribute.
New way to handle django CMS settings
If you have code that needs to access django CMS settings (settings prefixed with CMS_ or PLACEHOLDER_) you
would have used for example from django.conf import settings; settings.CMS_TEMPLATES.
This will no longer guarantee to return sane values, instead you should use cms.utils.conf.
get_cms_setting which takes the name of the setting without the CMS_ prefix as argument and returns the
setting.
Example of old, now deprecated style:

settings.CMS_TEMPLATES
settings.PLACEHOLDER_FRONTEND_EDITING
Should be replaced with the new API:
from cms.utils.conf import get_cms_setting
get_cms_setting('TEMPLATES')
get_cms_setting('PLACEHOLDER_FRONTEND_EDITING')
Added cms.constants module
This release adds the cms.constants module which will hold generic django CMS constant values. Currently
it only contains TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE_MAGIC which used to live in cms.conf.global_settings but
was moved to the new cms.constants module in the settings overhaul mentioned above.
django-reversion integration changes
django-reversion integration has changed. Because of huge databases after some time we introduce some changes to
the way revisions are handled for pages.
1. Only publish revisions are saved. All other revisions are deleted when you publish a page.
2. By default only the latest 25 publish revisions are kept. You can change this behaviour with the new
CMS_MAX_PAGE_PUBLISH_REVERSIONS setting.
Changes to the show_sub_menu template tag
The show_sub_menu has received two new parameters. The first stays the same and is still: how many levels of
menu should be displayed.
The second: root_level (default=None), specifies at what level, if any, the menu should root at. For example, if
root_level is 0 the menu will start at that level regardless of what level the current page is on.
The third argument: nephews (default=100), specifies how many levels of nephews (children of siblings) are shown.
PlaceholderAdmin support i18n
If you use placeholders in other apps or models we now support more than one language out of the box. If you just use
PlaceholderAdmin it will display language tabs like the cms. If you use django-hvad it uses the hvad language
tabs.
If you want to disable this behaviour you can set render_placeholder_language_tabs = False on your
Admin class that extends PlaceholderAdmin. If you use a custom change_form_template be sure to have a look
at cms/templates/admin/placeholders/placeholder/change_form.html for how to incorporate
language tabs.

Added CMS_RAW_ID_USERS
If you have a lot of users (500+) you can set this setting to a number after which admin User fields are displayed in a
raw Id field. This improves performance a lot in the admin as it has not to load all the users into the html.
Backwards incompatible changes
New minimum requirements for dependencies
• Django 1.3 and Python 2.5 are no longer supported.
• simple_language_changer will be removed in version 3.0. A bug-fix makes this redundant as every
non-managed URL will behave like this.
2.3.4 release notes
WymEditor fixed
2.3.4 fixes a critical issue with WymEditor that prevented it from load it’s JavaScript assets correctly.
Moved Norwegian translations
The Norwegian translations are now available as nb, which is the new (since 2003) official language code for Norwe-
gian, replacing the older and deprecated no code.
If your site runs in Norwegian, you need to change your LANGUAGES settings!
Added support for time zones
On Django 1.4, and with USE_TZ=True the django CMS now uses time zone aware date and time objects.
Fixed slug clashing
In earlier versions, publishing a page that has the same slug (URL) as another (published) page could lead to errors.
Now, when a page which would have the same URL as another (published) page is published, the user is shown an
error and they’re prompted to change the slug for the page.
Prevent unnamed related names for PlaceholderField
cms.models.fields.PlaceholderField no longer allows the related name to be suppressed. Trying to do

so will lead to a ValueError. This change was done to allow the django CMS to properly check permissions on
Placeholder Fields.

Two fixes to page change form
The change form for pages would throw errors if the user editing the page does not have the permission to publish this
page. This issue was resolved.
Further the page change form would not correctly pre-populate the slug field if DEBUG was set to False. Again, this
issue is now resolved.
2.3.3 release notes
Restored Python 2.5 support
2.3.3 restores Python 2.5 support for the django CMS.
Python 2.5 support will be dropped in django CMS 2.4.
2.3.2 release notes
Google map plugin
Google map plugin now supports width and height fields so that plugin size can be modified in the page admin or
frontend editor.
Zoom level is now set via a select field which ensure only legal values are used.
Warning: Due to the above change, level field is now marked as NOT NULL, and a data migration has been
introduced to modify existing Googlemap plugin instance to set the default value if level if is NULL.
2.3 release notes
What’s new in 2.3
Introducing Django 1.4 support, dropped support for Django 1.2
In django CMS 2.3 we dropped support for Django 1.2. Django 1.3.1 is now the minimum required Django version.
Django CMS 2.3 also introduces Django 1.4 support.
Lazy page tree loading in admin
Thanks to the work by Andrew Schoen the page tree in the admin now loads lazily, significantly improving the
performance of that view for large sites.

Toolbar isolation
The toolbar JavaScript dependencies should now be properly isolated and no longer pollute the global JavaScript
namespace.
Plugin cancel button fixed
The cancel button in plugin change forms no longer saves the changes, but actually cancels.
Tests refactor
Tests can now be run using setup.py test or runtests.py (the latter should be done in a virtualenv with the
proper dependencies installed).
Check runtests.py -h for options.
Moving text plugins to different placeholders no longer loses inline plugins
A serious bug where a text plugin with inline plugins would lose all the inline plugins when moved to a different
placeholder has been fixed.
Minor improvements
• The or clause in the placeholder tag now works correctly on non-cms pages.
• The icon source URL for inline plugins for text plugins no longer gets double escaped.
• PageSelectWidget correctly orders pages again.
• Fixed the file plugin which was sometimes causing invalid HTML (unclosed span tag).
• Migration ordering for plugins improved.
• Internationalised strings in JavaScript now get escaped.
New minimum requirements for dependencies
• django-reversion must now be at version 1.6

• django-sekizai must be at least at version 0.6.1
• django-mptt version 0.5.1 or 0.5.2 is required
Registering a list of plugins in the plugin pool
This feature was deprecated in version 2.2 and removed in 2.3. Code like this will not work any more:
plugin_pool.register_plugin([FooPlugin, BarPlugin])
Instead, use multiple calls to register_plugin:

plugin_pool.register_plugin(FooPlugin)
plugin_pool.register_plugin(BarPlugin)
The CMS_FLAT_URLS setting is deprecated and will be removed in version 2.4. The moderation feature
(CMS_MODERATOR = True) will be deprecated in 2.4 and replaced with a simpler way of handling unpublished
changes.
2.2 release notes
What’s new in 2.2
django-mptt now a proper dependency
django-mptt is now used as a proper dependency and is no longer shipped with the django CMS. This solves the
version conflict issues many people were experiencing when trying to use the django CMS together with other Django
apps that require django-mptt. django CMS 2.2 requires django-mptt 0.5.1.
Warning: Please remove the old mptt package from your Python site-packages directory before upgrading. The
setup.py file will install the django-mptt package as an external dependency!
Django 1.3 support
The django CMS 2.2 supports both Django 1.2.5 and Django 1.3.
View permissions
You can now give view permissions for django CMS pages to groups and users.
django-sekizai instead of PluginMedia
Due to the sorry state of the old plugin media framework, it has been dropped in favour of the more stable and more
flexible django-sekizai, which is a new dependency for the django CMS 2.2.
The following methods and properties of cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase are affected:
• cms.plugins_base.CMSPluginBase.PluginMedia
• cms.plugins_base.CMSPluginBase.pluginmedia
• cms.plugins_base.CMSPluginBase.get_plugin_media
Accessing those attributes or methods will raise a cms.exceptions.Deprecated error.

The cms.middleware.media.PlaceholderMediaMiddleware middleware was also removed in this

process and is therefore no longer required. However you are now required to have the sekizai.
context_processors.sekizai context processor in your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS setting.
All templates in CMS_TEMPLATES must at least contain the js and css sekizai namespaces.
Please refer to the documentation on Handling media in custom CMS plugins and the django-sekizai documentation
for more information.
Toolbar must be enabled explicitly in templates
The toolbar no longer hacks itself into responses in the middleware, but rather has to be enabled explicitly using the
{% cms_toolbar %} template tag from the cms_tags template tag library in your templates. The template tag
should be placed somewhere within the body of the HTML (within <body>...</body>).
This solves issues people were having with the toolbar showing up in places it shouldn’t have.
Static files moved to /static/
The static files (CSS/JavaScript/images) were moved from /media/ to /static/ to work with the new django.
contrib.staticfiles app in Django 1.3. This means you will have to make sure you serve static files as well
as media files on your server.
Warning: If you use Django 1.2.x you will not have a django.contrib.staticfiles app. Instead you
need the django-staticfiles backport.
Features deprecated in 2.2
django-dbgettext support
The django-dbgettext support has been fully dropped in 2.2 in favour of the built-in multi-lingual support mechanisms.
Upgrading from 2.1.x and Django 1.2.x
Upgrading dependencies
Upgrade both your version of django CMS and Django by running the following commands.
pip install --upgrade django-cms==2.2 django==1.3.1
If you are using django-reversion make sure to have at least version 1.4 installed
pip install --upgrade django-reversion==1.4
Also, make sure that django-mptt stays at a version compatible with django CMS
pip install --upgrade django-mptt==0.5.1

Updates to settings.py
The following changes will need to be made in your settings.py file:
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/static/admin'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, 'static')
STATIC_URL = "/static/"
Note: These are not django CMS settings. Refer to the Django documentation on staticfiles for more information.
Note: Please make sure the static sub-folder exists in your project and is writeable.
Note: PROJECT_PATH is the absolute path to your project.
Remove the following from TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS:

django.core.context_processors.auth
Add the following to TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS:
django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth
django.core.context_processors.static
sekizai.context_processors.sekizai
Remove the following from MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES:
cms.middleware.media.PlaceholderMediaMiddleware
Remove the following from INSTALLED_APPS:
publisher
Add the following to INSTALLED_APPS:
sekizai
django.contrib.staticfiles
Template Updates
Make sure to add sekizai tags and cms_toolbar to your CMS templates.
Note: cms_toolbar is only needed if you wish to use the front-end editing. See Backwards incompatible changes
for more information
Here is a simple example for a base template called base.html:
{% load cms_tags sekizai_tags %}

<html>
<head>


{% render_block "css" %}
</head>
<body>
{% cms_toolbar %}
{% placeholder base_content %}
{% block base_content%}{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>
Database Updates
Run the following commands to upgrade your database

Static Media
Add the following to urls.py to serve static media when developing:

if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
url(r'', include('django.contrib.staticfiles.urls')),
) + urlpatterns
Also run this command to collect static files into your STATIC_ROOT:
python manage.py collectstatic
4.1.7 Using django CMS
Note: This is a new section in the django CMS documentation, and a priority for the project. If you’d like to contribute
to it, we’d love to hear from you - join us on the #django-cms IRC channel on freenode or the django-cms-developers
email list.
The Using django CMS documentation is divided into two parts.

First, there’s a tutorial that takes you step-by-step through key processes. Once you’ve completed this you will be
familiar with the basics of content editing using the system.
The tutorial contains numerous links to items in the reference section.
The documentation in these two sections focuses on the basics of content creation and editing using django CMS’s
powerful front-end editing mode. It’s suitable for non-technical and technical audiences alike.
However, it can only cover the basics that are common to most sites built using django CMS. Your own site will likely
have many custom changes and special purpose plugins which we cannot cover here. Nevertheless, by the end of this

guide you should be comfortable with the content editing process using django CMS. Many of the skills you’ll learn
will be transferable to any custom plugins your site may have.
Tutorial
email list.
It’s strongly recommended that you follow this tutorial step-by-step. It has been designed to introduce you to the
system in a methodical way, and each step builds on the previous one.
Log in
When you visit a brand new site for the first time, you will be invited to log in.
The developers of your site are responsible for creating and providing the login credentials so consult them if you are
unsure.
Create a page
Create your first page
django CMS’s Create Page wizard will open a new dialog box.

Select Next, and provide a Title and some basic text content for the new page (you’ll be able to add formatting to this
text in a moment), then hit Create.
Here’s your newly-created page, together with the django CMS toolbar, your primary tool for managing django CMS
content.
Publish a page
Your newly-created page is just a draft, and won’t actually be published until you decide. As an editor, you can see
drafts, but other visitors to your site will only see published pages. Hit to publish it.

To edit the page further, switch back into editing mode, using the button that appears, and return to the
published version of the page using the button.

In editing mode, double-click on the paragraph of text to change it. This will open the Text plugin containing it. Make
changes, add some formatting, and Save it again.
You can continue making and previewing changes privately until you are ready to publish them.
Create a second page
Hit to create a second page. This opens the Create page dialog:
In django CMS, pages can be arranged hierarchically. This is important for larger sites. Choose whether the new page
should be a sub-page - a child - of the existing page, or be on the same level in the hierarchy - a sibling.
Once again, give the page a Title and some basic text content. Continue making changes to content and formatting,
and then Publish it as you did previously.

Changing page settings
The django CMS toolbar offers other useful editing tools.

Switch to Edit mode on one of your pages, and from the toolbar select Page > Page settings. . . . The Change page
dialog that opens allows you to manage key settings for your page.
Some key settings:

• Slug: The page’s slug is used to form its URL. For example, a page Lenses that is a sub-page of Photography
might have a URL that ends photography/lenses. You can change the automatically-generated slug of a
page if you wish to. Keep slugs short and meaningful, as they are useful to human beings and search engines
alike.
• Menu Title: If you have a page called Photography: theory and practice, you might not want the whole title to
appear in menus - shortening it to Photography would make more sense.
• Page Title: By default, a page’s <title> element is taken from the Title, but you can override this here. The
<title> element isn’t displayed on the page, but is used by search engines and web browsers - as far as they
are concerned, it’s the page’s real title.
• Description meta tag: A short piece of text that will be used by search engines (and displayed in lists of search
results) and other indexing systems.
There are also some Advanced Settings, but you don’t need to be concerned about these now.
Structure and content modes
The Structure/Content mode control in the toolbar lets you switch between two different editing modes.
You’ve already used Content mode, in which you can double-click on content to edit it.
In Structure mode, you can manage the placement of content within the page structure.

Switch to Structure mode. This reveals the structure board containing the placeholders available on the page, and the
plugins in them:
Here there is just one placeholder, called Content, containing one plugin - a text plugin that begins Lorem ipsum
dolor. . . .
Add a second plugin
Let’s add another plugin.

Select the Add plugin icon (+) and choose Text from the list of available plugin types.
This will open a familiar text editor; add some text and Save. Now in the structure board you’ll see the new Text plugin
- which you can move around within the structure, to re-order the plugins.
Note: You don’t need to save these changes manually - they are saved automatically as soon as you make them.
However, they still need to be published in order for other users to see them.
Each plugin in the structure board is available for editing by double-clicking or selecting the edit icon.

You can switch back to content mode to see the effect of your changes, and Publish the page to make them public.
Note: Touch-screen users

django CMS supports touch-screen interfaces, though there are currently some limitations in support. You will be able
to complete the tutorial using a touch-screen device, but please consult Using touch-screen devices with django CMS,
and see the notes on Device support.
Reference for content editors
email list.
Page admin
The interface
The django CMS toolbar
The toolbar is central to your content editing and management work in django CMS.
django CMS
Takes you back to home page of your site.
Site menu
example.com is the Site menu (and may have a different name for your site). Several options in this menu open up
administration controls in the side-frame:
• Pages . . . takes you directly to the pages editing interface
• Users . . . takes you directly to the users management panel

• Administration . . . takes you to the site-wide administration panel

• User settings . . . allows you to switch the language of the admin interface and toolbar
• Disable toolbar allows you to completely disable the toolbar and front-end editing, regardless of login and staff
status. To reactivate them, you need to enter edit mode either manually or through the backend administration.
You can also Logout from this menu.
Page menu
The Page menu contains options for managing the current page, and are either self-explanatory or will be described in
a forthcoming documentation section.
History menu
Allows you to manage publishing and view publishing history of the current page.
Language menu
Language allows you to switch to a different language version of the page you’re on, and manage the various transla-
tions.
Here you can:
• Add a missing translation
• Delete an existing translation
• Copy all plugins and their contents from an existing translation to the current one.
The Structure/Content button
Allows you to switch between different editing modes (when you’re looking at a draft
only).
Publishing controller
The Publishing controller manages the publishing state of your page - options are:
• Publish page now to publish an unpublished
• Publish changes to publish changes made to an existing page
• Edit to open the page for editing
• Save as draft to update the page and exit editing mode

• View published does the same as “Save as draft”

The disclosure triangle
A toggle to hide and reveal the toolbar.
The side-frame
The x closes the side-frame. To reopen the side-frame, choose one of the links from the Site menu (named
example.com by default).
The triangle icon expands and collapses the side-frame, and the next expands and collapses the main frame.
You can also adjust the side-frame’s width by dragging it.
Admin views & forms
Page list
The page list gives you an overview of your pages and their status. By default you get the basics:
The page you’re currently on is highlighted in grey (in this case, Journalism, the last in the list).
From left to right, items in the list have:
• an expand/collapse control, if the item has children (Home and Cheese above)
• tab that can be used to drag and drop the item to a new place in the list
• the page’s Title
• a soft-root indicator (Cheese has soft-root applied; Home is the menu root anyway)
• language version indicators and controls:
– blank: the translation does not exist; pressing the indicator will open its Basic settings (in all other
cases, hovering will reveal Publish/Unpublish options)
– grey: the translation exists but is unpublished
– green: the translation is published
– blue (pulsing): the translation has an amended draft
If you expand the width of the side-frame, you’ll see more:
• Menu indicates whether the page will appear in nav-
igation menus
• under Actions, options are:
– edit Basic settings
– copy page
– add child (which can be placed before, after or
below the page)
– cut page
– delete page
• info displays additional information about the page

Basic page settings
To see a page’s basic settings, select Page settings. . . from

the Page menu. If your side-frame is wide enough, you
can also use the page edit icon that appears in the Actions
column in the page list view.
Required fields
The page Title will typically be used by your site’s tem-

plates, and displayed at the top of the page and in the
browser’s title bar and bookmarks. In this case search en-
gines will use it too.
A Slug is part of the page’s URL, and you’ll usually want it
to reflect the Title. In fact it will be generated automatically
from the title, in an appropriate format - but it’s always
worth checking that your slugs are as short and sweet as
possible.
Optional fields
Menu title is used to override what is displayed in naviga-

tion menus - usually when the full Title is too long to be
used there. For example, if the Title is “ACME Incorpo-
rated: Our story”, it’s going to be far too long to work well
in the navigation menu, especially for your mobile users.
“Our story” would be a more appropriate Menu title.

Page title is expected to be used by django CMS templates

for the <title> element of the page (which will otherwise
simply use the Title field). If provided, it will be the Page
title that appears in the browser’s title bar and bookmarks,
and in search engine results.
Description meta tag is expected to be used to populate
a <meta> tag in the document <head>. This is not dis-
played on the page, but is used for example by search en-
gines for indexing and to show a summary of page content.
It can also be used by other Django applications for similar
purposes. Description is restricted to 320 characters, the
number of characters search engines typically use to show
content.
Advanced settings
A page’s advanced settings are available by selecting Ad-

vanced settings. . . from the Page menu, or from the Advanced settings button at the bottom of the basic settings.
Most of the time it’s not necessary to touch these settings.
• Overwrite URL allows you to change the URL from

the default. By default, the URL for the page is the
slug of the current page prefixed with slugs from par-
ent pages. For example, the default URL for a page
might be /about/acme-incorporated/our-vision/. The
Overwrite URL field allows you to shorten this to
/our-vision/ while still keeping the page and its chil-
dren organised under the About page in the naviga-
tion.
• Redirect allows you to redirect users to a different
page. This is useful if you have moved content to an-
other page but don’t want to break URLs your users
may have bookmarked or affect the rank of the page
in search engine results.
• Template lets you set the template used by the cur-
rent page. Your site will likely have a custom list
of available templates. Templates are configured by
developers to allow certain types of content to be en-
tered into the page while still retaining a consistent
layout.
• Id is an advanced field that should only be used in
consultation with your site’s developers. Changing
this without consulting developers may result in a
broken site.
• Soft root allows you to shorten the navigation hier-
archy to something manageable on sites that have
deeply nested pages. When selected, this page will act as the top-level page in the navigation.
• Attached menu allows you to add a custom menu to
the page. This is typically used by developers to

add custom menu logic to the current page. Chang-

ing this requires a server restart so it should only be
changed in consultation with developers.
• Application allows you to add custom applications
(e.g. a weblog app) to the current page. This also
is typically used by developers and requires a server
restart to take effect.
• X Frame Options allows you to control whether the
current page can be embedded in an iframe on an-
other web page.
Working with admin in the frontend
The Administration. . . item in the Site menu, opens the side-frame containing the site’s Django admin. This allows
the usual interaction with the “traditional” Django admin.
Redirection
When an object is created or edited while the user is on the website frontend, a redirection occurs to redirect the user
to the current address of the created/edited instance.
This redirection follows the rules below:
• an anonymous user (for example, after logging out) is always redirected to the home page
• when a model instance has changed (see Detecting URL changes to an object) the frontend is redirected to the
instance URL, and:
– in case of django CMS pages, the publishing state is taken into account, and then
* if the toolbar is in Draft mode the user is redirected to the draft page URL
* if in Live mode:
· the user is redirected to the page if is published
· otherwise it’s switched in Draft mode and redirected to the draft page URL
• if the edited object or its URL can’t be retrieved, no redirection occurs
Yes, it’s complex - but there is a logic to it, and it’s actually easier to understand when you’re using it than by reading
about it, so don’t worry too much. The point is that django CMS always tries to redirect you to the most sensible place
when it has to.

Python Module Index
c
cms.api, 115
cms.app_base, 118
cms.cms_toolbars, 169
cms.constants, 168
cms.management, 119
cms.models, 144
cms.templatetags.cms_tags, 151
cms.toolbar.items, 165
cms.toolbar.toolbar, 164
cms.toolbar_base.CMSToolbar, 168
265
266 Python Module Index

Index
Symbols add_link_item() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin

__init___() (cms.plugin_base.PluginMenuItem method), method), 167
149 add_link_item() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
_build_nodes() (menus.menu_pool.MenuPool method), method), 165
142 add_modal_button() (cms.toolbar.items.ButtonList
_mark_selected() (menus.menu_pool.MenuPool method), 166
method), 142 add_modal_button() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
_menus (cms.app_base.CMSApp attribute), 118 method), 165
_urls (cms.app_base.CMSApp attribute), 118 add_modal_item() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu method),
166
A add_modal_item() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
method), 167
accepted, 188
add_modal_item() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
ACCESS_CHILDREN (in module cms.models), 144
method), 165
ACCESS_DESCENDANTS (in module cms.models),
add_plugin() (in module cms.api), 116
144
add_sideframe_button() (cms.toolbar.items.ButtonList
ACCESS_PAGE (in module cms.models), 144
method), 166
ACCESS_PAGE_AND_DESCENDANTS (in module
add_sideframe_button() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
cms.models), 144
method), 165
active
add_sideframe_item() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu
command line option, 168
method), 166
add_ajax_item() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu method),
add_sideframe_item() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
166
method), 167
add_ajax_item() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
add_sideframe_item() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
method), 167
method), 165
add_ajax_item() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
ADMIN_MENU_IDENTIFIER (in module
method), 165
cms.cms_toolbars), 169
add_break() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu method), 166
admin_preview (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
add_button() (cms.toolbar.items.ButtonList method), 166
attribute), 144
add_button() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar method),
AjaxItem (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166
165
allow_children (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
add_button_list() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
attribute), 144
method), 165
apply_modifiers() (menus.menu_pool.MenuPool
add_item() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu method), 166
method), 142
add_item() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
assign_user_to_page() (in module cms.api), 117
method), 167
attr (menus.base.NavigationNode attribute), 142, 143
add_item() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar method),
AUTH_USER_MODEL
165
setting, 123
add_link_item() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu method),
165
267
B setting, 129
backport, 189 CMS_MAX_PAGE_PUBLISH_REVERSIONS
BaseItem (class in cms.toolbar.items), 167 setting, 136
blocker, 189 CMS_MEDIA_PATH
Break (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166 setting, 132
Button (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166 CMS_MEDIA_ROOT
ButtonList (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166 setting, 132
CMS_MEDIA_URL
C setting, 132
cache (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase attribute), 144 CMS_PAGE_CACHE
change_form_template (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase setting, 135
attribute), 145 CMS_PAGE_MEDIA_PATH
child_classes (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase at- setting, 133
tribute), 145 CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER
cms.admin.placeholderadmin.PlaceholderAdminMixin setting, 137
(built-in class), 144 CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN
cms.api (module), 115 setting, 137
cms.app_base (module), 118 CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY
cms.cms_toolbars (module), 169 setting, 137
cms.constants (module), 118, 168 CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE
cms.forms.fields.PageSelectFormField (built-in class), setting, 137
138 CMS_PERMISSION
cms.forms.fields.PageSmartLinkField (built-in class), setting, 133
138 CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CACHE
cms.management (module), 119 setting, 135
cms.menu.CMSMenu (built-in class), 143 CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF
cms.menu.NavExtender (built-in class), 143 setting, 125
cms.menu.SoftRootCutter (built-in class), 143 CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE
cms.menu_bases.CMSAttachMenu (built-in class), 143 setting, 135
cms.models (module), 144 CMS_PLUGIN_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
cms.models.fields.PageField (built-in class), 137 setting, 128
cms.models.fields.PlaceholderField (built-in class), 138 CMS_PLUGIN_PROCESSORS
cms.models.Page (built-in class), 143 setting, 128
cms.models.placeholdermodel.Placeholder (built-in CMS_PUBLIC_FOR
class), 144 setting, 134
cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin (built-in class), 149 CMS_RAW_ID_USERS
cms.models.Title (built-in class), 164 setting, 134
cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase (built-in class), 144 CMS_REQUEST_IP_RESOLVER
cms.plugin_base.PluginMenuItem (built-in class), 149 setting, 133
cms.plugin_pool.PluginPool (built-in class), 151 CMS_TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE
cms.sitemaps.CMSSitemap (built-in class), 151 setting, 124
cms.templatetags.cms_tags (module), 151 CMS_TEMPLATES
cms.toolbar.items (module), 165 setting, 124
cms.toolbar.toolbar (module), 164 CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR
cms.toolbar_base.CMSToolbar (module), 168 setting, 124
CMS_APPHOOKS cms_toolbar
setting, 128 template tag, 163
CMS_CACHE_DURATIONS CMS_TOOLBARS
setting, 134 setting, 136
CMS_CACHE_PREFIX CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS
CMS_INTERNAL_IPS CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DEFAULT_DECODER
CMS_LANGUAGES CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST
268 Index
setting, 131 get_add_url() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin

CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION method), 150
setting, 131 get_ancestors() (menus.base.NavigationNode method),
CMSApp (class in cms.app_base), 118 143
CMSToolbar (class in cms.toolbar.toolbar), 164 get_buttons() (cms.toolbar.items.ButtonList method), 166
CMSToolbar (class in cms.toolbar_base.CMSToolbar), get_cache_expiration() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
168 method), 147
code get_config() (cms.app_base.CMSApp method), 119
setting, 130 get_config_add_url() (cms.app_base.CMSApp method),
command line option 119
active, 168 get_configs() (cms.app_base.CMSApp method), 119
disabled, 168 get_context() (cms.toolbar.items.BaseItem method), 167
key, 168 get_context() (menus.templatetags.menu_tags.ShowMenu
on_close:, 168 method), 142
position, 168 get_copy_url() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
verbose_name, 168 method), 151
copy_relations() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin get_delete_url() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
method), 150 method), 151
create_page() (in module cms.api), 115 get_descendants() (menus.base.NavigationNode
create_page_user() (in module cms.api), 116 method), 143
create_title() (in module cms.api), 116 get_edit_url() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
method), 150
D get_extra_global_plugin_menu_items()
design decision, 189 (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method),
disable_child_plugins (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase 147
attribute), 145 get_extra_local_plugin_menu_items()
disabled (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method),
command line option, 168 147
discover_menus() (menus.menu_pool.MenuPool get_extra_placeholder_menu_items()
method), 142 (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method),
docs, 189 147
get_item_count() (cms.toolbar.items.SubMenu method),
E 166
easy pickings, 189 get_menu() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar method),
edit_mode_active() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar 165
method), 165 get_menu_title() (menus.base.NavigationNode method),
expert opinion, 188 143
EXPIRE_NOW (in module cms.constants), 118 get_menus() (cms.app_base.CMSApp method), 119
get_move_url() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
F method), 151
get_nodes() (menus.base.Menu method), 142
fallbacks
get_nodes() (menus.menu_pool.MenuPool method), 142
setting, 130
get_or_create_menu() (cms.toolbar.items.Menu method),
find_first() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
165
method), 167
get_or_create_menu() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
find_items() (cms.toolbar.items.ToolbarAPIMixin
method), 165
method), 167
get_plugin_urls() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
form (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase attribute), 145
method), 146
frontend_edit_template (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
get_render_template() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase
attribute), 145
method), 146
G get_translatable_content()
(cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
get_absolute_url() (menus.base.NavigationNode method), 150
method), 143 get_urls() (cms.app_base.CMSApp method), 119
Index 269
get_vary_cache_on() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase N
method), 148 name (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase attribute), 146
non-issue, 188
H
has patch, 189 O
hide_untranslated on hold, 189
setting, 130 on_close:
I
icon_alt() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method), P
148 page_attribute
icon_src() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method), template tag, 156
148 page_language_url
index (cms.toolbar.items.ItemSearchResult attribute), 168 template tag, 163
item (cms.toolbar.items.ItemSearchResult attribute), 167 page_lookup
ItemSearchResult (class in cms.toolbar.items), 167 template tag, 154
page_only (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase attribute),
K 146
key page_url
command line option, 168 template tag, 155
PagePermission (class in cms.models), 144
L parent_classes (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase at-
language_chooser tribute), 146
template tag, 163 patch, 189
LEFT (in module cms.constants), 118 placeholder
LinkItem (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166 template tag, 151
position
M command line option, 168
mark_levels() (menus.modifiers.Level method), 143 post_copy() (cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin
marked for rejection, 188 method), 150
MAX_EXPIRATION_TTL (in module cms.constants), public
118 setting, 130
Menu (class in cms.toolbar.items), 165 publish_page() (in module cms.api), 117
menus.base.Menu (built-in class), 142 publish_pages() (in module cms.api), 117
menus.base.Modifier (built-in class), 142
menus.base.NavigationNode (built-in class), 142 R
menus.menu_pool._build_nodes_inner_for_one_menu() ready for review, 188
(built-in function), 142 ready to be merged, 188
menus.menu_pool.MenuPool (built-in class), 142 redirect_on_fallback
menus.modifiers.AuthVisibility (built-in class), 143 setting, 131
menus.modifiers.Level (built-in class), 143 REFRESH (in module cms.constants), 118
menus.modifiers.Marker (built-in class), 143 REFRESH_PAGE (in module cms.constants), 168
menus.templatetags.menu_tags.cut_levels() (built-in render() (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method), 148
function), 142 render() (cms.toolbar.items.BaseItem method), 167
menus.templatetags.menu_tags.ShowMenu (built-in render_model
class), 142 template tag, 158
ModalButton (class in cms.toolbar.items), 167 render_model_add
ModalItem (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166 template tag, 161
model (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase attribute), 145 render_model_add_block
modify() (menus.base.Modifier method), 142 template tag, 162
module (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase attribute), 145 render_model_block
more info, 188 template tag, 159
render_model_icon
270 Index
template tag, 160 CMS_TOOLBARS, 136

render_placeholder CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DECODERS, 131
template tag, 153 CMS_UNIHANDECODE_DEFAULT_DECODER,
render_plugin 132
template tag, 156 CMS_UNIHANDECODE_HOST, 131
render_plugin (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase at- CMS_UNIHANDECODE_VERSION, 131
tribute), 146 code, 130
render_plugin_block fallbacks, 130
template tag, 157 hide_untranslated, 130
render_template (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase at- public, 130
tribute), 146 redirect_on_fallback, 131
render_uncached_placeholder show_breadcrumb
template tag, 153 template tag, 140
require_parent (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase at- show_menu
tribute), 146 template tag, 138
RIGHT (in module cms.constants), 118 show_menu_below_id
template tag, 139
S show_placeholder
set_translatable_content() template tag, 154
(cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin show_sub_menu
method), 150 template tag, 139
setting show_uncached_placeholder
AUTH_USER_MODEL, 123 template tag, 154
CMS_APPHOOKS, 128 SideframeButton (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166
CMS_CACHE_DURATIONS, 134 SideframeItem (class in cms.toolbar.items), 166
CMS_CACHE_PREFIX, 135 static_placeholder
CMS_INTERNAL_IPS, 133 template tag, 152
CMS_LANGUAGES, 129 SubMenu (class in cms.toolbar.items), 165
CMS_MAX_PAGE_PUBLISH_REVERSIONS,
136 T
CMS_MEDIA_PATH, 132 template (cms.toolbar.items.BaseItem attribute), 167
CMS_MEDIA_ROOT, 132 template tag
CMS_MEDIA_URL, 132 cms_toolbar, 163
CMS_PAGE_CACHE, 135 language_chooser, 163
CMS_PAGE_MEDIA_PATH, 133 page_attribute, 156
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER, page_language_url, 163
137 page_lookup, 154
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN, 137 page_url, 155
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY, placeholder, 151
137 render_model, 158
CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE, render_model_add, 161
137 render_model_add_block, 162
CMS_PERMISSION, 133 render_model_block, 159
CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CACHE, 135 render_model_icon, 160
CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF, 125 render_placeholder, 153
CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE, 135 render_plugin, 156
CMS_PLUGIN_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS, 128 render_plugin_block, 157
CMS_PLUGIN_PROCESSORS, 128 render_uncached_placeholder, 153
CMS_PUBLIC_FOR, 134 show_breadcrumb, 140
CMS_RAW_ID_USERS, 134 show_menu, 138
CMS_REQUEST_IP_RESOLVER, 133 show_menu_below_id, 139
CMS_TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE, 124 show_placeholder, 154
CMS_TEMPLATES, 124 show_sub_menu, 139
CMS_TEMPLATES_DIR, 124 show_uncached_placeholder, 154
Index 271
static_placeholder, 152
TEMPLATE_INHERITANCE_MAGIC (in module
cms.constants), 118
tests, 189
text_editor_button_icon()
(cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase method),
149
text_enabled (cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase at-
tribute), 146
ToolbarAPIMixin (class in cms.toolbar.items), 167
translatable_content_excluded_fields
(cms.models.pluginmodel.CMSPlugin at-
tribute), 149
V
verbose_name
VISIBILITY_ALL (in module cms.api), 115
VISIBILITY_ANONYMOUS (in module cms.api), 115
VISIBILITY_USERS (in module cms.api), 115
W
watch_models() (cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar
method), 165
won’t fix, 188
work in progress, 188
272 Index

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django cms Documentation

Divio AG and contributors

Dec 12, 2018

3 Why django CMS? 7

4 Software version requirements and release notes 9

Python Module Index 265

1.1 Tutorials - start here

1.2 How-to guides

1.3 Key topics

Explanation and analysis of some key concepts in django CMS.

Technical reference material, for classes, methods, APIs, commands.

django CMS is supported by a friendly and very knowledgeable community.

6 Chapter 2. Join us online

Why django CMS?

8 Chapter 3. Why django CMS?

Software version requirements and release notes

This document refers to version 3.6.0rc1.

4.1 Django/Python compatibility table

django Django Python

Installing django CMS

We’ll get started by setting up our environment.

Your working environment

Create and activate a virtual environment

python3.6 -m venv env # Python 2 usage: virtualenv env

Update pip inside the virtual environment

pip install --upgrade pip

Use the django CMS installer

pip install djangocms-installer

This provides you with a new command, djangocms.

10 Chapter 4. Software version requirements and release notes

Run it to create a new Django project called mysite:

Note: About Django Filer

Start up the runserver

python manage.py runserver

4.1. Django/Python compatibility table 11

Congratulations, you now have installed a fully functional CMS.

Templates & Placeholders

12 Chapter 4. Software version requirements and release notes

fullwidth.html contains a single placeholder, {% placeholder "content" %}.

4.1. Django/Python compatibility table 13

The menu we use in mysite/templates/base.html is:

<ul class="nav navbar-nav">

14 Chapter 4. Software version requirements and release notes

Incorporate the polls application

Install the application from its GitHub repository using pip:

pip install git+http://git@github.com/divio/django-polls.git#egg=polls

python manage.py migrate polls

Create a new Poll, for example:

4.1. Django/Python compatibility table 15

Improve the templates for Polls

Set up a new polls_cms_integration application

Create the application

Create a new package at the project root called polls_cms_integration:

python manage.py startapp polls_cms_integration

Our workspace now looks like this:

16 Chapter 4. Software version requirements and release notes

(continued from previous page)

Next is to integrate the polls_cms_integration application into the project.

Note: Adding templates to the project or to the application?