9. Integrating a third-party application

    First, we need to install the app into our virtual environment from PyPI:

    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:

    1. # you will probably need to add:
    2. 'aldryn_apphooks_config',
    3. 'aldryn_boilerplates',
    4. 'aldryn_categories',
    5. 'aldryn_newsblog',
    6. 'aldryn_people',
    7. 'aldryn_reversion',
    8. 'djangocms_text_ckeditor',
    9. 'parler',
    10. 'sortedm2m',
    11. 'taggit',
    13. # and you will probably find the following already listed:
    14. 'easy_thumbnails',
    15. 'filer',
    16. 'reversion',

    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:

    Aldryn News & Blog uses 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:

    1. ALDRYN_BOILERPLATE_NAME='bootstrap3'

    Add the boilerplates static files finder to STATICFILES_FINDERS, immediately before django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder:

    Important

    In Django 1.8, the TEMPLATE_LOADERS and TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS settings are rolled into the setting. We’re assuming you’re using Django 1.8 here.

    1.  TEMPLATES = [
    2.          # ...
    3.          'OPTIONS': {
    4.              'context_processors': [
    5.                  # ...
    6.                  'aldryn_boilerplates.context_processors.boilerplate',
    7.                  ],
    8.              'loaders': [
    9.                  # ...
    10.                  'aldryn_boilerplates.template_loaders.AppDirectoriesLoader',
    11.                  ],
    12.              },
    13.          },
    14.      ]

    We’ve added a new application so we need to update our database:

    Start the server again.

    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.

    Give this application configuration some settings:

    • Instance namespace: news (this is used for reversing URLs)
    • 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.)

    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.