For comments, questions and concerns, please see the Google Group.

So you've got some Django project up and running - well, adding snapboard is a snap! You just need to make a few symbolic links and minor changes to your Django settings and URLs.

Recommended Setup

Check out a copy of snapboard and make a symbolic link to the application in your project directory.

$ svn checkout http://snapboard.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ snapboard_trunk
$ ln -s `pwd`/snapboard_trunk/snapboard /path/to/django/exampleproject

Create a symbolic link your media directory pointing to snapboard media files.

$ ln -s `pwd`/snapboard_trunk/media /path/to/django/media/snapboard

urls.py

Edit your project urls (exampleproject/url.py) so the the following tuple is included:

    (r'^snapboard/', include('exampleproject.snapboard.urls')),

settings.py

Tell snapboard where the media files are:

SNAP_MEDIA_PREFIX = MEDIA_URL + '/media/snapboard'

Modify MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES to include snapboard middleware:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    ...
    # SNAPboard middleware
    'exampleproject.snapboard.middleware.threadlocals.ThreadLocals',
)

You then need to modify the TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS setting¹:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    "django.core.context_processors.auth",
    "django.core.context_processors.request",
    "django.core.context_processors.debug",
    "django.core.context_processors.i18n",

    # SNAPboard processors
    "examplesite.snapboard.views.snapboard_default_context",
)

¹ There is a gotcha here; the default template context processors are auth, debug, i18n, and request. When you set TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS in your project settings file, the defaults are no longer applied. At a minimum, you need auth and request. For more information see the Djano settings documentation.

Finally, add examplesite.snapboard to the list of INSTALLED_APPS.

Voila!

At this point, you can sync up and deploy.

$ cd /path/to/exampleproject; python manage.py syncdb

Extras

Account Registration

Optionally, if you want the snapboard account registration application, you can create a symbolic link in your project directory pointing to the sbreg application.

$ ln -s /path/to/snapboard_trunk/sbreg /path/to/django/exampleproject

Add sbreg to your urls (urls.py):

    (r'^accounts/', include('sbreg.urls')),

And add it to your list of installed applications (settings.py):

    'examplesite.sbreg',

URLs

You don't have to use /snapboard as your base URL. A good alternative is:

    (r'^forum/', include('examplesite.snapboard.urls')),
    (r'^forums/', include('examplesite.snapboard.urls')),

In this case, you need to set an additional snapboard variable in settings.py, e.g. for the urls above, you would need to set SNAP_PREFIX such that

SNAP_PREFIX = '/forums'    # note the lack of a trailing slash

Media Files

snapboard will accept a setting to specify a custom media location. The default is:

SNAP_MEDIA_PREFIX = MEDIA_URL + '/media'

If that's okay, you don't need to do anything. If you've moved the media files somewhere special, just set the above variable.

Templates

This section is incomplete SNAPboard templates are designed to be as flexible as possible. It is very easy to override them. We've tried to use the same template block variable names as the admin templates, so you should be comfortable doing small customizations. Larger changes like layout changes should also be relatively straightforward.

Credits

Thanks to johnnie.pittman for contributing to this page.