Welcome to Wagtail’s documentation

Wagtail is an open source CMS written in Python and built on the Django web framework.

Below are some useful links to help you get started with Wagtail.

Index

Getting started

Wagtail is built on the Django web framework, so this document assumes you’ve already got the essentials installed. But if not, those essentials are:

  • Python
  • pip (Note that pip is included by default with Python 2.7.9 and later and Python 3.4 and later)

We’d also recommend Virtualenv, which provides isolated Python environments:

Before we install Wagtail we should install Pillow for image manipulation. Before you run pip install Pillow note that most platforms require you install additional libraries first: Platform-specific installation instructions

With the above installed, the quickest way to install Wagtail is:

pip install wagtail

(sudo may be required if installing system-wide or without virtualenv)

Once installed, Wagtail provides a command similar to Django’s django-admin startproject which stubs out a new site/project:

wagtail start mysite

This will create a new folder mysite, based on a template containing all you need to get started. More information on that template is available here.

Inside your mysite folder, we now just run the setup steps necessary for any Django project:

pip install -r requirements.txt
./manage.py migrate
./manage.py createsuperuser
./manage.py runserver

Your site is now accessible at http://localhost:8000, with the admin backend available at http://localhost:8000/admin/.

There are a few optional packages which are not installed by default but are recommended to improve performance or add features to Wagtail, including:

Your first Wagtail site

  1. Install Wagtail and its dependencies:

    pip install wagtail

  2. Start your site:

    wagtail start mysite
cd mysite

    Wagtail provides a start command similar to django-admin.py startproject. Running wagtail start mysite in your project will generate a new mysite folder with a few Wagtail-specific extras, including the required project settings, a “home” app with a blank HomePage model and basic templates and a sample “search” app.

  3. Install project dependencies:

    pip install -r requirements.txt

    This ensures that you have the relevant version of Django for the project you’ve just created.

  4. Create the database:

    python manage.py migrate

    If you haven’t updated the project settings, this will be a SQLite database file in the project directory.

  5. Create an admin user:

    python manage.py createsuperuser

  6. python manage.py runserver If everything worked, http://127.0.0.1:8000 will show you a welcome page

    Wagtail welcome message

    You can now access the administrative area at /admin

    Administrative screen
Extend the HomePage model

Out of the box, the “home” app defines a blank HomePage model in models.py, along with a migration that creates a homepage and configures Wagtail to use it.

Edit home/models.py as follows, to add a body field to the model:

from __future__ import unicode_literals

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel


class HomePage(Page):
    body = RichTextField(blank=True)

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('body', classname="full")
    ]

body is defined as RichTextField, a special Wagtail field. You can use any of the Django core fields. content_panels define the capabilities and the layout of the editing interface. More on creating Page models.

Run python manage.py makemigrations, then python manage.py migrate to update the database with your model changes. You must run the above commands each time you make changes to the model definition.

You can now edit the homepage within the Wagtail admin area (go to Explorer, Homepage, then Edit) to see the new body field. Enter some text into the body field, and publish the page.

The page template now needs to be updated to reflect the changes made to the model. Wagtail uses normal Django templates to render each page type. It automatically generates a template filename from the model name by separating capital letters with underscores (e.g. HomePage becomes home_page.html). Edit home/templates/home/home_page.html to contain the following:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block body_class %}template-homepage{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    {{ self.body|richtext }}
{% endblock %}
Updated homepage
A basic blog

We are now ready to create a blog. To do so, run python manage.py startapp blog to create a new app in your Wagtail site.

Add the new blog app to INSTALLED_APPS in mysite/settings/base.py.

The following example defines a basic blog post model in blog/models.py:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailsearch import index


class BlogPage(Page):
    date = models.DateField("Post date")
    intro = models.CharField(max_length=250)
    body = RichTextField(blank=True)

    search_fields = Page.search_fields + (
        index.SearchField('intro'),
        index.SearchField('body'),
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('date'),
        FieldPanel('intro'),
        FieldPanel('body', classname="full")
    ]

Create a template at blog/templates/blog/blog_page.html:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block body_class %}templage-blogpage{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    <h1>{{ self.title }}</h1>
    <p class="meta">{{ self.date }}</p>

    <div class="intro">{{ self.intro }}</div>

    {{ self.body|richtext }}
{% endblock %}

Run python manage.py makemigrations and python manage.py migrate.

Create page screen
Page edit screen
Image support

Wagtail provides support for images out of the box. To add them to your model:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailimages.edit_handlers import ImageChooserPanel
from wagtail.wagtailsearch import index


class BlogPage(Page):
    main_image = models.ForeignKey(
        'wagtailimages.Image',
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+'
    )
    date = models.DateField("Post date")
    intro = models.CharField(max_length=250)
    body = RichTextField(blank=True)

    search_fields = Page.search_fields + (
        index.SearchField('intro'),
        index.SearchField('body'),
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('date'),
        ImageChooserPanel('main_image'),
        FieldPanel('intro'),
        FieldPanel('body'),
    ]

Run python manage.py makemigrations and python manage.py migrate.

Adjust your blog page template to include the image:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% load wagtailcore_tags wagtailimages_tags %}

{% block body_class %}templage-blogpage{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    <h1>{{ self.title }}</h1>
    <p class="meta">{{ self.date }}</p>

    {% if self.main_image %}
      {% image self.main_image width-400 %}
    {% endif %}

    <div class="intro">{{ self.intro }}</div>

    {{ self.body|richtext }}
{% endblock %}
A blog post sample

You can read more about using images in templates in the docs.

Blog Index

Let us extend the Blog app to provide an index.

class BlogIndexPage(Page):
    intro = RichTextField(blank=True)

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('intro', classname="full")
    ]

The above creates an index type to collect all our blog posts.

blog/templates/blog/blog_index_page.html

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block body_class %}template-blogindexpage{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    <h1>{{ self.title }}</h1>

    <div class="intro">{{ self.intro|richtext }}</div>
{% endblock %}
Where next

Demo site

To create a new site on Wagtail we recommend the wagtail start command in Getting started, however a demo site exists containing example page types and models. We also recommend you use the demo site for testing during development of Wagtail itself.

The repo and installation instructions can be found here: https://github.com/torchbox/wagtaildemo

Topics

Creating page models

Each page type (a.k.a Content type) in Wagtail is represented by a Django model. All page models must inherit from the wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page class.

As all page types are Django models, you can use any field type that Django provides. See Model field reference for a complete list of field types you can use. Wagtail also provides RichTextField which provides a WYSIWYG editor for editing rich-text content.

Django models

If you’re not yet familiar with Django models, have a quick look at the following links to get you started: Creating models Model syntax

An example Wagtail Page Model

This example represents a typical blog post:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel, MultiFieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailimages.edit_handlers import ImageChooserPanel


class BlogPage(Page):
    body = RichTextField()
    date = models.DateField("Post date")
    feed_image = models.ForeignKey(
        'wagtailimages.Image',
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+'
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('date'),
        FieldPanel('body', classname="full"),
    ]

    promote_panels = [
        MultiFieldPanel(Page.promote_panels, "Common page configuration"),
        ImageChooserPanel('feed_image'),
    ]

Tip

To keep track of Page models and avoid class name clashes, it can be helpful to suffix model class names with “Page” e.g BlogPage, ListingIndexPage.

In the example above the BlogPage class defines three properties: body, date, and feed_image. These are a mix of basic Django models (DateField), Wagtail fields (RichTextField), and a pointer to a Wagtail model (Image).

Below that the content_panels and promote_panels lists define the capabilities and layout of the page editing interface in the Wagtail admin. The lists are filled with “panels” and “choosers”, which will provide a fine-grain interface for inputting the model’s content. The ImageChooserPanel, for instance, lets one browse the image library, upload new images and input image metadata. The RichTextField is the basic field for creating web-ready website rich text, including text formatting and embedded media like images and video. The Wagtail admin offers other choices for fields, Panels, and Choosers, with the option of creating your own to precisely fit your content without workarounds or other compromises.

Your models may be even more complex, with methods overriding the built-in functionality of the Page to achieve webdev magic. Or, you can keep your models simple and let Wagtail’s built-in functionality do the work.

Tips
Friendly model names

Make your model names more friendly to users of Wagtail using Django’s internal Meta class with a verbose_name e.g

class HomePage(Page):
    ...

    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "Homepage"

When users are given a choice of pages to create, the list of page types is generated by splitting your model names on each of their capital letters. Thus a HomePage model would be named “Home Page” which is a little clumsy. verbose_name as in the example above, would change this to read “Homepage” which is slightly more conventional.

Writing templates

Wagtail uses Django’s templating language. For developers new to Django, start with Django’s own template documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/templates/

Python programmers new to Django/Wagtail may prefer more technical documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/api/

You should be familiar with Django templating basics before continuing with this documentation.

Templates

Every type of page or “content type” in Wagtail is defined as a “model” in a file called models.py. If your site has a blog, you might have a BlogPage model and another called BlogPageListing. The names of the models are up to the Django developer.

For each page model in models.py, Wagtail assumes an HTML template file exists of (almost) the same name. The Front End developer may need to create these templates themselves by refering to models.py to infer template names from the models defined therein.

To find a suitable template, Wagtail converts CamelCase names to underscore_case. So for a BlogPage, a template blog_page.html will be expected. The name of the template file can be overridden per model if necessary.

Template files are assumed to exist here:

name_of_project/
    name_of_app/
        templates/
            name_of_app/
                blog_page.html
        models.py

For more information, see the Django documentation for the application directories template loader.

Page content

The data/content entered into each page is accessed/output through Django’s {{ double-brace }} notation. Each field from the model must be accessed by prefixing self.. e.g the page title {{ self.title }} or another field {{ self.author }}.

Additionally request. is available and contains Django’s request object.

Static assets

Static files e.g CSS, JS and images are typically stored here:

name_of_project/
    name_of_app/
        static/
            name_of_app/
                css/
                js/
                images/
        models.py

(The names “css”, “js” etc aren’t important, only their position within the tree.)

Any file within the static folder should be inserted into your HTML using the {% static %} tag. More about it: Static files (tag).

User images

Images uploaded to Wagtail by its users (as opposed to a developer’s static files, above) go into the image library and from there are added to pages via the page editor interface.

Unlike other CMS, adding images to a page does not involve choosing a “version” of the image to use. Wagtail has no predefined image “formats” or “sizes”. Instead the template developer defines image manipulation to occur on the fly when the image is requested, via a special syntax within the template.

Images from the library must be requested using this syntax, but a developer’s static images can be added via conventional means e.g img tags. Only images from the library can be manipulated on the fly.

Read more about the image manipulation syntax here Using images in templates.

Template tags & filters

In addition to Django’s standard tags and filters, Wagtail provides some of its own, which can be load-ed as you would any other

Images (tag)

The image tag inserts an XHTML-compatible img element into the page, setting its src, width, height and alt. See also More control over the img tag.

The syntax for the tag is thus:

{% image [image] [resize-rule] %}

For example:

{% load wagtailimages_tags %}
...

{% image self.photo width-400 %}

<!-- or a square thumbnail: -->
{% image self.photo fill-80x80 %}

See Using images in templates for full documentation.

Rich text (filter)

This filter takes a chunk of HTML content and renders it as safe HTML in the page. Importantly it also expands internal shorthand references to embedded images and links made in the Wagtail editor into fully-baked HTML ready for display.

Only fields using RichTextField need this applied in the template.

{% load wagtailcore_tags %}
...
{{ self.body|richtext }}
Responsive Embeds

Wagtail embeds and images are included at their full width, which may overflow the bounds of the content container you’ve defined in your templates. To make images and embeds responsive – meaning they’ll resize to fit their container – include the following CSS.

.rich-text img {
    max-width: 100%;
    height: auto;
}

.responsive-object {
    position: relative;
}
    .responsive-object iframe,
    .responsive-object object,
    .responsive-object embed {
        position: absolute;
        top: 0;
        left: 0;
        width: 100%;
        height: 100%;
    }
Static files (tag)

Used to load anything from your static files directory. Use of this tag avoids rewriting all static paths if hosting arrangements change, as they might between local and a live environments.

{% load static %}
...
<img src="{% static "name_of_app/myimage.jpg" %}" alt="My image"/>

Notice that the full path name is not required and the path snippet you enter only need begin with the parent app’s directory name.

Wagtail User Bar

This tag provides a contextual flyout menu on the top-right of a page for logged-in users. The menu gives editors the ability to edit the current page or add another at the same level. Moderators are also given the ability to accept or reject a page previewed as part of content moderation.

{% load wagtailuserbar %}
...
{% wagtailuserbar %}

By default the User Bar appears in the top right of the browser window, flush with the edge. If this conflicts with your design it can be moved with a css rule in your own CSS files e.g to move it down from the top:

#wagtail-userbar{
   top:200px
}

Images

Using images in templates

The image tag inserts an XHTML-compatible img element into the page, setting its src, width, height and alt. See also More control over the img tag.

The syntax for the tag is thus:

{% image [image] [resize-rule] %}

For example:

{% load wagtailimages_tags %}
...

{% image self.photo width-400 %}

<!-- or a square thumbnail: -->
{% image self.photo fill-80x80 %}

In the above syntax example [image] is the Django object refering to the image. If your page model defined a field called “photo” then [image] would probably be self.photo. The [resize-rule] defines how the image is to be resized when inserted into the page; various resizing methods are supported, to cater for different usage cases (e.g. lead images that span the whole width of the page, or thumbnails to be cropped to a fixed size).

Note that a space separates [image] and [resize-rule], but the resize rule must not contain spaces.

The available resizing methods are:

max

(takes two dimensions)

{% image self.photo max-1000x500 %}

Fit within the given dimensions.

The longest edge will be reduced to the equivalent dimension size defined. For example, a portrait image of width 1000, height 2000, treated with the max dimensions 1000x500 (landscape) would result in the image shrunk so the height was 500 pixels and the width 250.

min

(takes two dimensions)

{% image self.photo min-500x200 %}

Cover the given dimensions.

This may result in an image slightly larger than the dimensions you specify. e.g A square image of width 2000, height 2000, treated with the min dimensions 500x200 (landscape) would have its height and width changed to 500, i.e matching the width required, but greater than the height.

width

(takes one dimension)

{% image self.photo width-640 %}

Reduces the width of the image to the dimension specified.

height

(takes one dimension)

{% image self.photo height-480 %}

Resize the height of the image to the dimension specified..

fill

(takes two dimensions and an optional -c parameter)

{% image self.photo fill-200x200 %}

Resize and crop to fill the exact dimensions.

This can be particularly useful for websites requiring square thumbnails of arbitrary images. For example, a landscape image of width 2000, height 1000, treated with fill dimensions 200x200 would have its height reduced to 200, then its width (ordinarily 400) cropped to 200.

This filter will crop to the image’s focal point if it has been set. If not, it will crop to the centre of the image.

On images that won’t upscale

It’s possible to request an image with fill dimensions that the image can’t support without upscaling. e.g an image 400x200 requested with fill-400x400. In this situation the ratio of the requested fill will be matched, but the dimension will not. So with that example 400x200 image, the resulting image will be 200x200.

Cropping closer to the focal point

By default, Wagtail will only crop to change the aspect ratio of the image.

In some cases (thumbnails, for example) it may be nice to crop closer to the focal point so the subject of the image is easier to see.

You can do this by appending -c<percentage> at the end of the method. For example, if you would like the image to be cropped as closely as possible to its focal point, add -c100 to the end of the method.

{% image self.photo fill-200x200-c100 %}

This will crop the image as much as it can, but will never crop into the focal point.

If you find that -c100 is too close, you can try -c75 or -c50 (any whole number from 0 to 100 is accepted).

original

(takes no dimensions)

{% image self.photo original %}

Leaves the image at its original size - no resizing is performed.

Note

Wagtail does not allow deforming or stretching images. Image dimension ratios will always be kept. Wagtail also does not support upscaling. Small images forced to appear at larger sizes will “max out” at their native dimensions.

More control over the img tag

Wagtail provides two shortcuts to give greater control over the img element:

1. Adding attributes to the {% image %} tag

Extra attributes can be specified with the syntax attribute="value":

{% image self.photo width-400 class="foo" id="bar" %}

No validation is performed on attributes added in this way so it’s possible to add src, width, height and alt of your own that might conflict with those generated by the tag itself.

2. Generating the image “as foo” to access individual properties

Wagtail can assign the image data to another variable using Django’s as syntax:

{% image self.photo width-400 as tmp_photo %}

<img src="{{ tmp_photo.url }}" width="{{ tmp_photo.width }}"
    height="{{ tmp_photo.height }}" alt="{{ self.photo.title }}" class="my-custom-class" />

This syntax exposes the underlying image “Rendition” (tmp_photo) to the developer. A “Rendition” contains just the information specific to the way you’ve requested to format the image i.e dimensions and source URL.

If your site defines a custom image model using AbstractImage, then any additional fields you add to an image e.g a copyright holder, are not part of the image rendition, they’re part of the image model.

Therefore in the above example, if you’d added the field foo to your AbstractImage you’d access it using {{ self.photo.foo }} not {{ tmp_photo.foo }}.

(Due to the links in the database between renditions and their parent image, you could also access it as {{ tmp_photo.image.foo }} but this is clearly confusing.)

Note

The image property used for the src attribute is actually image.url, not image.src.

The attrs shortcut

You can also use the attrs property as a shorthand to output the attributes src, width, height and alt in one go:

<img {{ tmp_photo.attrs }} class="my-custom-class" />
Using images outside Wagtail

Wagtail provides a way for you to generate external URLs for images in your image library which you can use to display your images on external sites.

Setup

Add an entry in your URLs configuration for wagtail.wagtailimages.urls:

from wagtail.wagtailimages import urls as wagtailimages_urls


urlpatterns = [
    ...

    url(r'^images/', include(wagtailimages_urls)),
]
Generating URLs for images

Once the above setup is done, a button should appear under the image preview on the image edit page. Clicking this button will take you to an interface where you can specify the size you want the image to be, and it will generate a URL and a preview of what the image is going to look like.

The filter box lets you choose how you would like the image to be resized:

Original
Leaves the image at its original size - no resizing is performed.
Resize to max

Fit within the given dimensions.

The longest edge will be reduced to the equivalent dimension size defined. e.g A portrait image of width 1000, height 2000, treated with the max dimensions 1000x500 (landscape) would result in the image shrunk so the height was 500 pixels and the width 250.

Resize to min

Cover the given dimensions.

This may result in an image slightly larger than the dimensions you specify. e.g A square image of width 2000, height 2000, treated with the min dimensions 500x200 (landscape) would have it’s height and width changed to 500, i.e matching the width required, but greater than the height.

Resize to width
Reduces the width of the image to the dimension specified.
Resize to height
Resize the height of the image to the dimension specified..
Resize to fill

Resize and crop to fill the exact dimensions.

This can be particularly useful for websites requiring square thumbnails of arbitrary images. For example, a landscape image of width 2000, height 1000, treated with fill dimensions 200x200 would have its height reduced to 200, then its width (ordinarily 400) cropped to 200.

Using the URLs on your website or blog

Once you have generated a URL, you can put it straight into the src attribute of an <img> tag:

<img src="(image url here)">
Advanced topics
Custom image model

The Image model can be customised, allowing additional fields to be added to images.

To do this, you need to add two models to your project:

  • The image model itself that inherits from wagtail.wagtailimages.models.AbstractImage. This is where you would add your additional fields
  • The renditions model that inherits from wagtail.wagtailimages.models.AbstractRendition. This is used to store renditions for the new model.

Here’s an example:

# models.py
from django.db import models
from django.db.models.signals import pre_delete
from django.dispatch import receiver

from wagtail.wagtailimages.models import Image, AbstractImage, AbstractRendition


class CustomImage(AbstractImage):
    # Add any extra fields to image here

    # eg. To add a caption field:
    # caption = models.CharField(max_length=255)

    admin_form_fields = Image.admin_form_fields + (
        # Then add the field names here to make them appear in the form:
        # 'caption',
    )


class CustomRendition(AbstractRendition):
    image = models.ForeignKey(CustomImage, related_name='renditions')

    class Meta:
        unique_together = (
            ('image', 'filter', 'focal_point_key'),
        )


# Delete the source image file when an image is deleted
@receiver(pre_delete, sender=CustomImage)
def image_delete(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    instance.file.delete(False)


# Delete the rendition image file when a rendition is deleted
@receiver(pre_delete, sender=CustomRendition)
def rendition_delete(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    instance.file.delete(False)

Note

If you are using image feature detection, follow these instructions to enable it on your custom image model: Feature detection and custom image models

Then set the WAGTAILIMAGES_IMAGE_MODEL setting to point to it:

WAGTAILIMAGES_IMAGE_MODEL = 'images.CustomImage'

Migrating from the builtin image model

When changing an existing site to use a custom image model. No images will be copied to the new model automatically. Copying old images to the new model would need to be done manually with a data migration.

Any templates that reference the builtin image model will still continue to work as before but would need to be updated in order to see any new images.

Animated GIF support

Pillow (Wagtail’s default image library) doesn’t support resizing animated GIFs. If you need animated GIFs in your site, install Wand.

When Wand is installed, Wagtail will automatically start using it for resizing GIF files, and will continue to resize other images with Pillow.

Feature Detection

Wagtail has the ability to automatically detect faces and features inside your images and crop the images to those features.

Feature detection uses OpenCV to detect faces/features in an image when the image is uploaded. The detected features stored internally as a focal point in the focal_point_{x, y, width, height} fields on the Image model. These fields are used by the fill image filter when an image is rendered in a template to crop the image.

Setup

Feature detection requires OpenCV which can be a bit tricky to install as it’s not currently pip-installable.

Installing OpenCV on Debian/Ubuntu

Debian and ubuntu provide an apt-get package called python-opencv:

sudo apt-get install python-opencv python-numpy

This will install PyOpenCV into your site packages. If you are using a virtual environment, you need to make sure site packages are enabled or Wagtail will not be able to import PyOpenCV.

Enabling site packages in the virtual environment

If you are not using a virtual envionment, you can skip this step.

Enabling site packages is different depending on whether you are using pyvenv (Python 3.3+ only) or virtualenv to manage your virtual environment.

pyvenv

Go into your pyvenv directory and open the pyvenv.cfg file then set include-system-site-packages to true.

virtualenv

Go into your virtualenv directory and delete a file called lib/python-x.x/no-global-site-packages.txt.

Testing the OpenCV installation

You can test that OpenCV can be seen by Wagtail by opening up a python shell (with your virtual environment active) and typing:

import cv

If you don’t see an ImportError, it worked. (If you see the error libdc1394 error: Failed to initialize libdc1394, this is harmless and can be ignored.)

Switching on feature detection in Wagtail

Once OpenCV is installed, you need to set the WAGTAILIMAGES_FEATURE_DETECTION_ENABLED setting to True:

# settings.py

WAGTAILIMAGES_FEATURE_DETECTION_ENABLED = True
Manually running feature detection

Feature detection runs when new images are uploaded in to Wagtail. If you already have images in your Wagtail site and would like to run feature detection on them, you will have to run it manually.

You can manually run feature detection on all images by running the following code in the python shell:

from wagtail.wagtailimages.models import Image

for image in Image.objects.all():
    if not image.has_focal_point():
        image.set_focal_point(image.get_suggested_focal_point())
        image.save()
Feature detection and custom image models

When using a Custom image model, you need to add a signal handler to the model to trigger feature detection whenever a new image is uploaded:

# Do feature detection when a user saves an image without a focal point
@receiver(pre_save, sender=CustomImage)
def image_feature_detection(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    # Make sure the image doesn't already have a focal point
    if not instance.has_focal_point():
        # Set the focal point
        instance.set_focal_point(instance.get_suggested_focal_point())

Note

This example will always run feature detection regardless of whether the WAGTAILIMAGES_FEATURE_DETECTION_ENABLED setting is set.

Add a check for this setting if you still want it to have effect.

Snippets

Snippets are pieces of content which do not necessitate a full webpage to render. They could be used for making secondary content, such as headers, footers, and sidebars, editable in the Wagtail admin. Snippets are models which do not inherit the Page class and are thus not organized into the Wagtail tree, but can still be made editable by assigning panels and identifying the model as a snippet with the register_snippet class decorator.

Snippets are not search-able or order-able in the Wagtail admin, so decide carefully if the content type you would want to build into a snippet might be more suited to a page.

Snippet Models

Here’s an example snippet from the Wagtail demo website:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailsnippets.models import register_snippet

...

@register_snippet
class Advert(models.Model):
  url = models.URLField(null=True, blank=True)
  text = models.CharField(max_length=255)

  panels = [
    FieldPanel('url'),
    FieldPanel('text'),
  ]

  def __unicode__(self):
    return self.text

The Advert model uses the basic Django model class and defines two properties: text and URL. The editing interface is very close to that provided for Page-derived models, with fields assigned in the panels property. Snippets do not use multiple tabs of fields, nor do they provide the “save as draft” or “submit for moderation” features.

@register_snippet tells Wagtail to treat the model as a snippet. The panels list defines the fields to show on the snippet editing page. It’s also important to provide a string representation of the class through def __unicode__(self): so that the snippet objects make sense when listed in the Wagtail admin.

Including Snippets in Template Tags

The simplest way to make your snippets available to templates is with a template tag. This is mostly done with vanilla Django, so perhaps reviewing Django’s documentation for django custom template tags will be more helpful. We’ll go over the basics, though, and make note of any considerations to make for Wagtail.

First, add a new python file to a templatetags folder within your app. The demo website, for instance uses the path wagtaildemo/demo/templatetags/demo_tags.py. We’ll need to load some Django modules and our app’s models and ready the register decorator:

from django import template
from demo.models import *

register = template.Library()

...

# Advert snippets
@register.inclusion_tag('demo/tags/adverts.html', takes_context=True)
def adverts(context):
  return {
    'adverts': Advert.objects.all(),
    'request': context['request'],
  }

@register.inclusion_tag() takes two variables: a template and a boolean on whether that template should be passed a request context. It’s a good idea to include request contexts in your custom template tags, since some Wagtail-specific template tags like pageurl need the context to work properly. The template tag function could take arguments and filter the adverts to return a specific model, but for brevity we’ll just use Advert.objects.all().

Here’s what’s in the template used by the template tag:

{% for advert in adverts %}
  <p>
    <a href="{{ advert.url }}">
      {{ advert.text }}
    </a>
  </p>
{% endfor %}

Then in your own page templates, you can include your snippet template tag with:

{% block content %}

  ...

  {% adverts %}

{% endblock %}
Binding Pages to Snippets

In the above example, the list of adverts is a fixed list, displayed as part of the template independently of the page content. This might be what you want for a common panel in a sidebar, say - but in other scenarios you may wish to refer to a snippet within page content. This can be done by defining a foreign key to the snippet model within your page model, and adding a SnippetChooserPanel to the page’s content_panels definitions. For example, if you wanted to be able to specify an advert to appear on BookPage:

from wagtail.wagtailsnippets.edit_handlers import SnippetChooserPanel
# ...
class BookPage(Page):
  advert = models.ForeignKey(
    'demo.Advert',
    null=True,
    blank=True,
    on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
    related_name='+'
  )

BookPage.content_panels = [
  SnippetChooserPanel('advert', Advert),
  # ...
]

The snippet could then be accessed within your template as self.advert.

To attach multiple adverts to a page, the SnippetChooserPanel can be placed on an inline child object of BookPage, rather than on BookPage itself. Here this child model is named BookPageAdvertPlacement (so called because there is one such object for each time that an advert is placed on a BookPage):

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailsnippets.edit_handlers import SnippetChooserPanel

from modelcluster.fields import ParentalKey

...

class BookPageAdvertPlacement(Orderable, models.Model):
  page = ParentalKey('demo.BookPage', related_name='advert_placements')
  advert = models.ForeignKey('demo.Advert', related_name='+')

  class Meta:
    verbose_name = "Advert Placement"
    verbose_name_plural = "Advert Placements"

  panels = [
    SnippetChooserPanel('advert', Advert),
  ]

  def __unicode__(self):
    return self.page.title + " -> " + self.advert.text

class BookPage(Page):
  ...

BookPage.content_panels = [
  InlinePanel('advert_placements', label="Adverts"),
  # ...
]

These child objects are now accessible through the page’s advert_placements property, and from there we can access the linked Advert snippet as advert. In the template for BookPage, we could include the following:

{% for advert_placement in self.advert_placements.all %}
  <p><a href="{{ advert_placement.advert.url }}">{{ advert_placement.advert.text }}</a></p>
{% endfor %}

Freeform page content using StreamField

StreamField provides a content editing model suitable for pages that do not follow a fixed structure - such as blog posts or news stories, where the text may be interspersed with subheadings, images, pull quotes and video, and perhaps more specialised content types such as maps and charts (or, for a programming blog, code snippets). In this model, these different content types are represented as a sequence of ‘blocks’, which can be repeated and arranged in any order.

For further background on StreamField, and why you would use it instead of a rich text field for the article body, see the blog post Rich text fields and faster horses.

StreamField also offers a rich API to define your own block types, ranging from simple collections of sub-blocks (such as a ‘person’ block consisting of first name, surname and photograph) to completely custom components with their own editing interface. Within the database, the StreamField content is stored as JSON, ensuring that the full informational content of the field is preserved, rather than just an HTML representation of it.

Using StreamField

StreamField is a model field that can be defined within your page model like any other field:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import StreamField
from wagtail.wagtailcore import blocks
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel, StreamFieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailimages.blocks import ImageChooserBlock

class BlogPage(Page):
    author = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    date = models.DateField("Post date")
    body = StreamField([
        ('heading', blocks.CharBlock(classname="full title")),
        ('paragraph', blocks.RichTextBlock()),
        ('image', ImageChooserBlock()),
    ])

BlogPage.content_panels = [
    FieldPanel('author'),
    FieldPanel('date'),
    StreamFieldPanel('body'),
]

Note: StreamField is not backwards compatible with other field types such as RichTextField; if you migrate an existing field to StreamField, the existing data will be lost.

The parameter to StreamField is a list of (name, block_type) tuples; ‘name’ is used to identify the block type within templates and the internal JSON representation (and should follow standard Python conventions for variable names: lower-case and underscores, no spaces) and ‘block_type’ should be a block definition object as described below. (Alternatively, StreamField can be passed a single StreamBlock instance - see Structural block types.)

This defines the set of available block types that can be used within this field. The author of the page is free to use these blocks as many times as desired, in any order.

Basic block types

All block types accept the following optional keyword arguments:

default
The default value that a new ‘empty’ block should receive.
label
The label to display in the editor interface when referring to this block - defaults to a prettified version of the block name (or, in a context where no name is assigned - such as within a ListBlock - the empty string).
icon
The name of the icon to display for this block type in the menu of available block types. For a list of icon names, see the Wagtail style guide, which can be enabled by adding wagtail.contrib.wagtailstyleguide to your project’s INSTALLED_APPS.
template
The path to a Django template that will be used to render this block on the front end. See Template rendering.

The basic block types provided by Wagtail are as follows:

CharBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.CharBlock

A single-line text input. The following keyword arguments are accepted:

required (default: True)
If true, the field cannot be left blank.
max_length, min_length
Ensures that the string is at most or at least the given length.
help_text
Help text to display alongside the field.
TextBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.TextBlock

A multi-line text input. As with CharBlock, the keyword arguments required, max_length, min_length and help_text are accepted.

URLBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.URLBlock

A single-line text input that validates that the string is a valid URL. The keyword arguments required, max_length, min_length and help_text are accepted.

BooleanBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.BooleanBlock

A checkbox. The keyword arguments required and help_text are accepted. As with Django’s BooleanField, a value of required=True (the default) indicates that the checkbox must be ticked in order to proceed; for a checkbox that can be ticked or unticked, you must explicitly pass in required=False.

DateBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.DateBlock

A date picker. The keyword arguments required and help_text are accepted.

TimeBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.TimeBlock

A time picker. The keyword arguments required and help_text are accepted.

DateTimeBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.DateTimeBlock

A combined date / time picker. The keyword arguments required and help_text are accepted.

RichTextBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.RichTextBlock

A WYSIWYG editor for creating formatted text including links, bold / italics etc.

RawHTMLBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.RawHTMLBlock

A text area for entering raw HTML which will be rendered unescaped in the page output. The keyword arguments required, max_length, min_length and help_text are accepted.

Warning

When this block is in use, there is nothing to prevent editors from inserting malicious scripts into the page, including scripts that would allow the editor to acquire administrator privileges when another administrator views the page. Do not use this block unless your editors are fully trusted.

ChoiceBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.ChoiceBlock

A dropdown select box for choosing from a list of choices. The following keyword arguments are accepted:

choices
A list of choices, in any format accepted by Django’s choices parameter for model fields: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/models/fields/#field-choices
required (default: True)
If true, the field cannot be left blank.
help_text
Help text to display alongside the field.

ChoiceBlock can also be subclassed to produce a reusable block with the same list of choices everywhere it is used. For example, a block definition such as:

blocks.ChoiceBlock(choices=[
    ('tea', 'Tea'),
    ('coffee', 'Coffee'),
], icon='cup')

could be rewritten as a subclass of ChoiceBlock:

class DrinksChoiceBlock(blocks.ChoiceBlock):
    choices = [
        ('tea', 'Tea'),
        ('coffee', 'Coffee'),
    ]

    class Meta:
        icon = 'cup'

StreamField definitions can then refer to DrinksChoiceBlock() in place of the full ChoiceBlock definition.

PageChooserBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.PageChooserBlock

A control for selecting a page object, using Wagtail’s page browser. The keyword argument required is accepted.

DocumentChooserBlock

wagtail.wagtaildocs.blocks.DocumentChooserBlock

A control to allow the editor to select an existing document object, or upload a new one. The keyword argument required is accepted.

ImageChooserBlock

wagtail.wagtailimages.blocks.ImageChooserBlock

A control to allow the editor to select an existing image, or upload a new one. The keyword argument required is accepted.

SnippetChooserBlock

wagtail.wagtailsnippets.blocks.SnippetChooserBlock

A control to allow the editor to select a snippet object. Requires one positional argument: the snippet class to choose from. The keyword argument required is accepted.

EmbedBlock

wagtail.wagtailembeds.blocks.EmbedBlock

A field for the editor to enter a URL to a media item (such as a YouTube video) to appear as embedded media on the page. The keyword arguments required, max_length, min_length and help_text are accepted.

Structural block types

In addition to the basic block types above, it is possible to define new block types made up of sub-blocks: for example, a ‘person’ block consisting of sub-blocks for first name, surname and image, or a ‘carousel’ block consisting of an unlimited number of image blocks. These structures can be nested to any depth, making it possible to have a structure containing a list, or a list of structures.

StructBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.StructBlock

A block consisting of a fixed group of sub-blocks to be displayed together. Takes a list of (name, block_definition) tuples as its first argument:

('person', blocks.StructBlock([
    ('first_name', blocks.CharBlock(required=True)),
    ('surname', blocks.CharBlock(required=True)),
    ('photo', ImageChooserBlock()),
    ('biography', blocks.RichTextBlock()),
], icon='user'))

Alternatively, the list of sub-blocks can be provided in a subclass of StructBlock:

class PersonBlock(blocks.StructBlock):
    first_name = blocks.CharBlock(required=True)
    surname = blocks.CharBlock(required=True)
    photo = ImageChooserBlock()
    biography = blocks.RichTextBlock()

    class Meta:
        icon = 'user'

The Meta class supports the properties default, label, icon and template; these have the same meanings as when they are passed to the block’s constructor.

This defines PersonBlock() as a block type that can be re-used as many times as you like within your model definitions:

body = StreamField([
    ('heading', blocks.CharBlock(classname="full title")),
    ('paragraph', blocks.RichTextBlock()),
    ('image', ImageChooserBlock()),
    ('person', PersonBlock()),
])

To customise the styling of the block as it appears in the page editor, your subclass can specify a form_classname attribute in Meta to override the default value of struct-block:

class PersonBlock(blocks.StructBlock):
    first_name = blocks.CharBlock(required=True)
    surname = blocks.CharBlock(required=True)
    photo = ImageChooserBlock()
    biography = blocks.RichTextBlock()

    class Meta:
        icon = 'user'
        form_classname = 'person-block struct-block'

You can then provide custom CSS for this block, targeted at the specified classname, by using the insert_editor_css hook (see Hooks). For more extensive customisations that require changes to the HTML markup as well, you can override the form_template attribute in Meta.

ListBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.ListBlock

A block consisting of many sub-blocks, all of the same type. The editor can add an unlimited number of sub-blocks, and re-order and delete them. Takes the definition of the sub-block as its first argument:

('ingredients_list', blocks.ListBlock(blocks.CharBlock(label="Ingredient")))

Any block type is valid as the sub-block type, including structural types:

('ingredients_list', blocks.ListBlock(blocks.StructBlock([
    ('ingredient', blocks.CharBlock(required=True)),
    ('amount', blocks.CharBlock()),
])))
StreamBlock

wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.StreamBlock

A block consisting of a sequence of sub-blocks of different types, which can be mixed and reordered in any order. Used as the overall mechanism of the StreamField itself, but can also be nested or used within other structural block types. Takes a list of (name, block_definition) tuples as its first argument:

('carousel', blocks.StreamBlock(
    [
        ('image', ImageChooserBlock()),
        ('quotation', blocks.StructBlock([
            ('text', blocks.TextBlock()),
            ('author', blocks.CharBlock()),
        ])),
        ('video', EmbedBlock()),
    ],
    icon='cogs'
))

As with StructBlock, the list of sub-blocks can also be provided as a subclass of StreamBlock:

class CarouselBlock(blocks.StreamBlock):
    image = ImageChooserBlock()
    quotation = blocks.StructBlock([
        ('text', blocks.TextBlock()),
        ('author', blocks.CharBlock()),
    ])
    video = EmbedBlock()

    class Meta:
        icon='cogs'

Since StreamField accepts an instance of StreamBlock as a parameter, in place of a list of block types, this makes it possible to re-use a common set block types without repeating definitions:

class HomePage(Page):
    carousel = StreamField(CarouselBlock())
Template rendering

The simplest way to render the contents of a StreamField into your template is to output it as a variable, like any other field:

{{ self.body }}

This will render each block of the stream in turn, wrapped in a <div class="block-my_block_name"> element (where my_block_name is the block name given in the StreamField definition). If you wish to provide your own HTML markup, you can instead iterate over the field’s value to access each block in turn:

<article>
    {% for block in self.body %}
        <section>{{ block }}</section>
    {% endfor %}
</article>

For more control over the rendering of specific block types, each block object provides block_type and value properties:

<article>
    {% for block in self.body %}
        {% if block.block_type == 'heading' %}
            <h1>{{ block.value }}</h1>
        {% else %}
            <section class="block-{{ block.block_type }}">
                {{ block }}
            </section>
        {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
</article>

Each block type provides its own front-end HTML rendering mechanism, and this is used for the output of {{ block }}. For most simple block types, such as CharBlock, this will simply output the field’s value, but others will provide their own HTML markup; for example, a ListBlock will output the list of child blocks as a <ul> element (with each child wrapped in an <li> element and rendered using the child block’s own HTML rendering).

To override this with your own custom HTML rendering, you can pass a template argument to the block, giving the filename of a template file to be rendered. This is particularly useful for custom block types derived from StructBlock, as the default StructBlock rendering is simple and somewhat generic:

('person', blocks.StructBlock(
    [
        ('first_name', blocks.CharBlock(required=True)),
        ('surname', blocks.CharBlock(required=True)),
        ('photo', ImageChooserBlock()),
        ('biography', blocks.RichTextBlock()),
    ],
    template='myapp/blocks/person.html',
    icon='user'
))

Or, when defined as a subclass of StructBlock:

class PersonBlock(blocks.StructBlock):
    first_name = blocks.CharBlock(required=True)
    surname = blocks.CharBlock(required=True)
    photo = ImageChooserBlock()
    biography = blocks.RichTextBlock()

    class Meta:
        template = 'myapp/blocks/person.html'
        icon = 'user'

Within the template, the block value is accessible as the variable self:

{% load wagtailimages_tags %}

<div class="person">
    {% image self.photo width-400 %}
    <h2>{{ self.first_name }} {{ self.surname }}</h2>
    {{ self.bound_blocks.biography.render }}
</div>

The line self.bound_blocks.biography.render warrants further explanation. While blocks such as RichTextBlock are aware of their own rendering, the actual block values (as returned when accessing properties of a StructBlock, such as self.biography), are just plain Python values such as strings. To access the block’s proper HTML rendering, you must retrieve the ‘bound block’ - an object which has access to both the rendering method and the value - via the bound_blocks property.

Custom block types

If you need to implement a custom UI, or handle a datatype that is not provided by Wagtail’s built-in block types (and cannot built up as a structure of existing fields), it is possible to define your own custom block types. For further guidance, refer to the source code of Wagtail’s built-in block classes.

For block types that simply wrap an existing Django form field, Wagtail provides an abstract class wagtail.wagtailcore.blocks.FieldBlock as a helper. Subclasses just need to set a field property that returns the form field object:

class IPAddressBlock(FieldBlock):
    def __init__(self, required=True, help_text=None, **kwargs):
        self.field = forms.GenericIPAddressField(required=required, help_text=help_text)
        super(IPAddressBlock, self).__init__(**kwargs)
Migrations
StreamField definitions within migrations

As with any model field in Django, any changes to a model definition that affect a StreamField will result in a migration file that contains a ‘frozen’ copy of that field definition. Since a StreamField definition is more complex than a typical model field, there is an increased likelihood of definitions from your project being imported into the migration - which would cause problems later on if those definitions are moved or deleted.

To mitigate this, StructBlock, StreamBlock and ChoiceBlock implement additional logic to ensure that any subclasses of these blocks are deconstructed to plain instances of StructBlock, StreamBlock and ChoiceBlock - in this way, the migrations avoid having any references to your custom class definitions. This is possible because these block types provide a standard pattern for inheritance, and know how to reconstruct the block definition for any subclass that follows that pattern.

If you subclass any other block class, such as FieldBlock, you will need to either keep that class definition in place for the lifetime of your project, or implement a custom deconstruct method that expresses your block entirely in terms of classes that are guaranteed to remain in place. Similarly, if you customise a StructBlock, StreamBlock or ChoiceBlock subclass to the point where it can no longer be expressed as an instance of the basic block type - for example, if you add extra arguments to the constructor - you will need to provide your own deconstruct method.

Migrating RichTextFields to StreamField

If you change an existing RichTextField to a StreamField, and create and run migrations as normal, the migration will complete with no errors, since both fields use a text column within the database. However, StreamField uses a JSON representation for its data, and so the existing text needs to be converted with a data migration in order to become accessible again. For this to work, the StreamField needs to include a RichTextBlock as one of the available block types. The field can then be converted by creating a new migration (./manage.py makemigrations --empty myapp) and editing it as follows (in this example, the ‘body’ field of the demo.BlogPage model is being converted to a StreamField with a RichTextBlock named rich_text):

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from __future__ import unicode_literals

from django.db import models, migrations
from wagtail.wagtailcore.rich_text import RichText


def convert_to_streamfield(apps, schema_editor):
    BlogPage = apps.get_model("demo", "BlogPage")
    for page in BlogPage.objects.all():
        if page.body.raw_text and not page.body:
            page.body = [('rich_text', RichText(page.body.raw_text))]
            page.save()


def convert_to_richtext(apps, schema_editor):
    BlogPage = apps.get_model("demo", "BlogPage")
    for page in BlogPage.objects.all():
        if page.body.raw_text is None:
            raw_text = ''.join([
                child.value.source for child in page.body
                if child.block_type == 'rich_text'
            ])
            page.body = raw_text
            page.save()


class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
        # leave the dependency line from the generated migration intact!
        ('demo', '0001_initial'),
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.RunPython(
            convert_to_streamfield,
            convert_to_richtext,
        ),
    ]

Advanced topics

Configuring Django for Wagtail

To install Wagtail completely from scratch, create a new Django project and an app within that project. For instructions on these tasks, see Writing your first Django app. Your project directory will look like the following:

myproject/
    myproject/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        wsgi.py
    myapp/
        __init__.py
        models.py
        tests.py
        admin.py
        views.py
    manage.py

From your app directory, you can safely remove admin.py and views.py, since Wagtail will provide this functionality for your models. Configuring Django to load Wagtail involves adding modules and variables to settings.py and URL configuration to urls.py. For a more complete view of what’s defined in these files, see Django Settings and Django URL Dispatcher.

What follows is a settings reference which skips many boilerplate Django settings. If you just want to get your Wagtail install up quickly without fussing with settings at the moment, see Ready to Use Example Configuration Files.

Middleware (settings.py)
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
  'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
  'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
  'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
  'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
  'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
  'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',

  'wagtail.wagtailcore.middleware.SiteMiddleware',

  'wagtail.wagtailredirects.middleware.RedirectMiddleware',
)

Wagtail requires several common Django middleware modules to work and cover basic security. Wagtail provides its own middleware to cover these tasks:

SiteMiddleware
Wagtail routes pre-defined hosts to pages within the Wagtail tree using this middleware.
RedirectMiddleware
Wagtail provides a simple interface for adding arbitrary redirects to your site and this module makes it happen.
Apps (settings.py)
INSTALLED_APPS = (
  'django.contrib.auth',
  'django.contrib.contenttypes',
  'django.contrib.sessions',
  'django.contrib.messages',
  'django.contrib.staticfiles',

  'compressor',
  'taggit',
  'modelcluster',

  'wagtail.wagtailcore',
  'wagtail.wagtailadmin',
  'wagtail.wagtaildocs',
  'wagtail.wagtailsnippets',
  'wagtail.wagtailusers',
  'wagtail.wagtailimages',
  'wagtail.wagtailembeds',
  'wagtail.wagtailsearch',
  'wagtail.wagtailsites',
  'wagtail.wagtailredirects',
  'wagtail.wagtailforms',

  'myapp',  # your own app
)

Wagtail requires several Django app modules, third-party apps, and defines several apps of its own. Wagtail was built to be modular, so many Wagtail apps can be omitted to suit your needs. Your own app (here myapp) is where you define your models, templates, static assets, template tags, and other custom functionality for your site.

Third-Party Apps
compressor
Static asset combiner and minifier for Django. Compressor also enables for the use of preprocessors. See Compressor Documentation.
taggit
Tagging framework for Django. This is used internally within Wagtail for image and document tagging and is available for your own models as well. See Tagging for a Wagtail model recipe or the Taggit Documentation.
modelcluster
Extension of Django ForeignKey relation functionality, which is used in Wagtail pages for on-the-fly related object creation. For more information, see Inline Panels and Model Clusters or the django-modelcluster github project page.
Wagtail Apps
wagtailcore
The core functionality of Wagtail, such as the Page class, the Wagtail tree, and model fields.
wagtailadmin
The administration interface for Wagtail, including page edit handlers.
wagtaildocs
The Wagtail document content type.
wagtailsnippets
Editing interface for non-Page models and objects. See Snippets.
wagtailusers
User editing interface.
wagtailimages
The Wagtail image content type.
wagtailembeds
Module governing oEmbed and Embedly content in Wagtail rich text fields. See Inserting videos into body content.
wagtailsearch
Search framework for Page content. See Search Page.
wagtailredirects
Admin interface for creating arbitrary redirects on your site.
wagtailforms
Models for creating forms on your pages and viewing submissions. See Form builder.
Settings Variables (settings.py)
Site Name
WAGTAIL_SITE_NAME = 'Stark Industries Skunkworks'

This is the human-readable name of your Wagtail install which welcomes users upon login to the Wagtail admin.

Embeds

Wagtail uses the oEmbed standard with a large but not comprehensive number of “providers” (Youtube, Vimeo, etc.). You can also use a different embed backend by providing an Embedly key or replacing the embed backend by writing your own embed finder function.

WAGTAILEMBEDS_EMBED_FINDER = 'myapp.embeds.my_embed_finder_function'

Use a custom embed finder function, which takes a URL and returns a dict with metadata and embeddable HTML. Refer to the wagtail.wagtailemebds.embeds module source for more information and examples.

# not a working key, get your own!
EMBEDLY_KEY = '253e433d59dc4d2xa266e9e0de0cb830'

Providing an API key for the Embedly service will use that as a embed backend, with a more extensive list of providers, as well as analytics and other features. For more information, see Embedly.

To use Embedly, you must also install their Python module:

$ pip install embedly
Images
WAGTAILIMAGES_IMAGE_MODEL = 'myapp.MyImage'

This setting lets you provide your own image model for use in Wagtail, which might extend the built-in AbstractImage class or replace it entirely.

Email Notifications
WAGTAILADMIN_NOTIFICATION_FROM_EMAIL = 'wagtail@myhost.io'

Wagtail sends email notifications when content is submitted for moderation, and when the content is accepted or rejected. This setting lets you pick which email address these automatic notifications will come from. If omitted, Django will fall back to using the DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL variable if set, and webmaster@localhost if not.

Wagtail update notifications
WAGTAIL_ENABLE_UPDATE_CHECK = True

For admins only, Wagtail performs a check on the dashboard to see if newer releases are available. This also provides the Wagtail team with the hostname of your Wagtail site. If you’d rather not receive update notifications, or if you’d like your site to remain unknown, you can disable it with this setting.

Private Pages
PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE = 'myapp/password_required.html'

This is the path to the Django template which will be used to display the “password required” form when a user accesses a private page. For more details, see the Private pages documentation.

Other Django Settings Used by Wagtail
ALLOWED_HOSTS
APPEND_SLASH
AUTH_USER_MODEL
BASE_URL
CACHES
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL
INSTALLED_APPS
MEDIA_ROOT
SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
SESSION_COOKIE_NAME
SESSION_COOKIE_PATH
STATIC_URL
TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
USE_I18N

For information on what these settings do, see Django Settings.

URL Patterns
from django.contrib import admin

from wagtail.wagtailcore import urls as wagtail_urls
from wagtail.wagtailadmin import urls as wagtailadmin_urls
from wagtail.wagtaildocs import urls as wagtaildocs_urls
from wagtail.wagtailsearch import urls as wagtailsearch_urls

urlpatterns = [
  url(r'^django-admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),

  url(r'^admin/', include(wagtailadmin_urls)),
  url(r'^search/', include(wagtailsearch_urls)),
  url(r'^documents/', include(wagtaildocs_urls)),

  # Optional URL for including your own vanilla Django urls/views
  url(r'', include('myapp.urls')),

  # For anything not caught by a more specific rule above, hand over to
  # Wagtail's serving mechanism
  url(r'', include(wagtail_urls)),
]

This block of code for your project’s urls.py does a few things:

  • Load the vanilla Django admin interface to /django-admin/
  • Load the Wagtail admin and its various apps
  • Dispatch any vanilla Django apps you’re using other than Wagtail which require their own URL configuration (this is optional, since Wagtail might be all you need)
  • Lets Wagtail handle any further URL dispatching.

That’s not everything you might want to include in your project’s URL configuration, but it’s what’s necessary for Wagtail to flourish.

Ready to Use Example Configuration Files

These two files should reside in your project directory (myproject/myproject/).

settings.py
import os

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..', '..')

DEBUG = True
TEMPLATE_DEBUG = DEBUG

ADMINS = (
    # ('Your Name', 'your_email@example.com'),
)

MANAGERS = ADMINS

# Default to dummy email backend. Configure dev/production/local backend
# as per https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/email/#email-backends
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.dummy.EmailBackend'

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'myprojectdb',
        'USER': 'postgres',
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST': '',  # Set to empty string for localhost.
        'PORT': '',  # Set to empty string for default.
        'CONN_MAX_AGE': 600,  # number of seconds database connections should persist for
    }
}

# Hosts/domain names that are valid for this site; required if DEBUG is False
# See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/ref/settings/#allowed-hosts
ALLOWED_HOSTS = []

# Local time zone for this installation. Choices can be found here:
# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_zones_by_name
# although not all choices may be available on all operating systems.
# On Unix systems, a value of None will cause Django to use the same
# timezone as the operating system.
# If running in a Windows environment this must be set to the same as your
# system time zone.
TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/London'

# Language code for this installation. All choices can be found here:
# http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/language-identifiers.html
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-gb'

SITE_ID = 1

# If you set this to False, Django will make some optimizations so as not
# to load the internationalization machinery.
USE_I18N = True

# If you set this to False, Django will not format dates, numbers and
# calendars according to the current locale.
# Note that with this set to True, Wagtail will fall back on using numeric dates
# in date fields, as opposed to 'friendly' dates like "24 Sep 2013", because
# Python's strptime doesn't support localised month names: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/13339
USE_L10N = False

# If you set this to False, Django will not use timezone-aware datetimes.
USE_TZ = True

# Absolute filesystem path to the directory that will hold user-uploaded files.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/media/"
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'media')

# URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a
# trailing slash.
# Examples: "http://media.lawrence.com/media/", "http://example.com/media/"
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

# Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to.
# Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files
# in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static')

# URL prefix for static files.
# Example: "http://media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

# List of finder classes that know how to find static files in
# various locations.
STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
    'compressor.finders.CompressorFinder',
)

# Make this unique, and don't share it with anybody.
SECRET_KEY = 'change-me'

# List of callables that know how to import templates from various sources.
TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
)

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',

    'wagtail.wagtailcore.middleware.SiteMiddleware',

    'wagtail.wagtailredirects.middleware.RedirectMiddleware',
)

from django.conf import global_settings
TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = global_settings.TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS + (
    'django.core.context_processors.request',
)

ROOT_URLCONF = 'myproject.urls'

# Python dotted path to the WSGI application used by Django's runserver.
WSGI_APPLICATION = 'wagtaildemo.wsgi.application'

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    'compressor',
    'taggit',
    'modelcluster',

    'wagtail.wagtailcore',
    'wagtail.wagtailadmin',
    'wagtail.wagtaildocs',
    'wagtail.wagtailsnippets',
    'wagtail.wagtailusers',
    'wagtail.wagtailimages',
    'wagtail.wagtailembeds',
    'wagtail.wagtailsearch',
    'wagtail.wagtailredirects',
    'wagtail.wagtailforms',

    'myapp',
)

EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = '[Wagtail] '

INTERNAL_IPS = ('127.0.0.1', '10.0.2.2')

# A sample logging configuration. The only tangible logging
# performed by this configuration is to send an email to
# the site admins on every HTTP 500 error when DEBUG=False.
# See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/logging for
# more details on how to customize your logging configuration.
LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'filters': {
        'require_debug_false': {
            '()': 'django.utils.log.RequireDebugFalse'
        }
    },
    'handlers': {
        'mail_admins': {
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'filters': ['require_debug_false'],
            'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler'
        }
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django.request': {
            'handlers': ['mail_admins'],
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'propagate': True,
        },
    }
}


# WAGTAIL SETTINGS

# This is the human-readable name of your Wagtail install
# which welcomes users upon login to the Wagtail admin.
WAGTAIL_SITE_NAME = 'My Project'

# Override the search results template for wagtailsearch
# WAGTAILSEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE = 'myapp/search_results.html'
# WAGTAILSEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE_AJAX = 'myapp/includes/search_listing.html'

# Replace the search backend
#WAGTAILSEARCH_BACKENDS = {
#  'default': {
#    'BACKEND': 'wagtail.wagtailsearch.backends.elasticsearch.ElasticSearch',
#    'INDEX': 'myapp'
#  }
#}

# Wagtail email notifications from address
# WAGTAILADMIN_NOTIFICATION_FROM_EMAIL = 'wagtail@myhost.io'

# If you want to use Embedly for embeds, supply a key
# (this key doesn't work, get your own!)
# EMBEDLY_KEY = '253e433d59dc4d2xa266e9e0de0cb830'
urls.py
from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from django.conf.urls.static import static
from django.views.generic.base import RedirectView
from django.contrib import admin
from django.conf import settings
import os.path

from wagtail.wagtailcore import urls as wagtail_urls
from wagtail.wagtailadmin import urls as wagtailadmin_urls
from wagtail.wagtaildocs import urls as wagtaildocs_urls
from wagtail.wagtailsearch import urls as wagtailsearch__urls


urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^django-admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),

    url(r'^admin/', include(wagtailadmin_urls)),
    url(r'^search/', include(wagtailsearch_urls)),
    url(r'^documents/', include(wagtaildocs_urls)),

    # For anything not caught by a more specific rule above, hand over to
    # Wagtail's serving mechanism
    url(r'', include(wagtail_urls)),
)


if settings.DEBUG:
    from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns

    urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns() # tell gunicorn where static files are in dev mode
    urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL + 'images/', document_root=os.path.join(settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'images'))
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^favicon\.ico$', RedirectView.as_view(url=settings.STATIC_URL + 'myapp/images/favicon.ico'))
    )

Deploying Wagtail

On your server

Wagtail is straightforward to deploy on modern Linux-based distributions, but see the section on performance for the non-Python services we recommend. If you are running Debian or Ubuntu, this installation script for our Vagrant box may be useful:

github.com/torchbox/wagtaildemo/blob/master/etc/install/install.sh

Our current preferences are for Nginx, Gunicorn and supervisor on Debian, but Wagtail should run with any of the combinations detailed in Django’s deployment documentation.

On Gondor

Gondor specialise in Python hosting. They provide Redis and Elasticsearch, which are two of the services we recommend for high-performance production sites. Gondor have written a comprehensive tutorial on running your Wagtail site on their platform, at gondor.io/blog/2014/02/14/how-run-wagtail-cms-gondor/.

On other PAASs and IAASs

We know of Wagtail sites running on Heroku, Digital Ocean and elsewhere. If you have successfully installed Wagtail on your platform or infrastructure, please contribute your notes to this documentation!

Performance

Wagtail is designed for speed, both in the editor interface and on the front-end, but if you want even better performance or you need to handle very high volumes of traffic, here are some tips on eking out the most from your installation.

Editor interface

We have tried to minimise external dependencies for a working installation of Wagtail, in order to make it as simple as possible to get going. However, a number of default settings can be configured for better performance:

Cache

We recommend Redis as a fast, persistent cache. Install Redis through your package manager (on Debian or Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install redis-server), add django-redis to your requirements.txt, and enable it as a cache backend:

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django_redis.cache.RedisCache',
        'LOCATION': '127.0.0.1:6379',
        'OPTIONS': {
            'CLIENT_CLASS': 'django_redis.client.DefaultClient',
        }
    }
}

Without a persistent cache, Wagtail will recreate all compressible assets at each server start, e.g. when any files change under ./manage.py runserver.

Database

Wagtail is tested on SQLite, and should work on other Django-supported database backends, but we recommend PostgreSQL for production use.

Public users
Caching proxy

To support high volumes of traffic with excellent response times, we recommend a caching proxy. Both Varnish and Squid have been tested in production. Hosted proxies like Cloudflare should also work well.

Wagtail supports automatic cache invalidation for Varnish/Squid. See Frontend cache invalidator for more information.

Creating multilingual sites

This tutorial will show you a method of creating multilingual sites in Wagtail.

Currently, Wagtail doesn’t support multiple languages in the same page. The recommended way of creating multilingual websites in Wagtail at the moment is to create one section of your website for each language.

For example:

/
    en/
        about/
        contact/
    fr/
        about/
        contact/
The root page

The root page (/) should detect the browsers language and forward them to the correct language homepage (/en/, /fr/). This page should sit at the site root (where the homepage would normally be).

We must set Django’s LANGUAGES setting so we don’t redirect non English/French users to pages that don’t exist.

# settings.py
LANGUAGES = (
    ('en', _("English")),
    ('fr', _("French")),
)

# models.py
from django.utils import translation
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page


class LanguageRedirectionPage(Page):

    def serve(self, request):
        # This will only return a language that is in the LANGUAGES Django setting
        language = translation.get_language_from_request(request)

        return HttpResponseRedirect(self.url + language + '/')
Linking pages together

It may be useful to link different versions of the same page together to allow the user to easily switch between languages. But we don’t want to increase the burden on the editor too much so ideally, editors should only need to link one of the pages to the other versions and the links between the other versions should be created implicitly.

As this behaviour needs to be added to all page types that would be translated, its best to put this behaviour in a mixin.

Here’s an example of how this could be implemented (with English as the main language and French/Spanish as alternative languages):

class TranslatablePageMixin(models.Model):
    # One link for each alternative language
    # These should only be used on the main language page (english)
    french_link = models.ForeignKey(Page, null=True, on_delete=models.SET_NULL, blank=True, related_name='+')
    spanish_link = models.ForeignKey(Page, null=True, on_delete=models.SET_NULL, blank=True, related_name='+')

    def get_language(self):
        """
        This returns the language code for this page.
        """
        # Look through ancestors of this page for its language homepage
        # The language homepage is located at depth 3
        language_homepage = self.get_ancestors(inclusive=True).get(depth=3)

        # The slug of language homepages should always be set to the language code
        return language_homepage.slug


    # Method to find the main language version of this page
    # This works by reversing the above links

    def english_page(self):
        """
        This finds the english version of this page
        """
        language = self.get_language()

        if language == 'en':
            return self
        elif language == 'fr':
            return type(self).objects.filter(french_link=self).first().specific
        elif language == 'es':
            return type(self).objects.filter(spanish_link=self).first().specific


    # We need a method to find a version of this page for each alternative language.
    # These all work the same way. They firstly find the main version of the page
    # (english), then from there they can just follow the link to the correct page.

    def french_page(self):
        """
        This finds the french version of this page
        """
        english_page = self.english_page()

        if english_page and english_page.french_link:
            return english_page.french_link.specific

    def spanish_page(self):
        """
        This finds the spanish version of this page
        """
        english_page = self.english_page()

        if english_page and english_page.spanish_link:
            return english_page.spanish_link.specific

    class Meta:
        abstract = True


class AboutPage(Page, TranslatablePageMixin):
    ...


class ContactPage(Page, TranslatablePageMixin):
    ...

You can make use of these methods in your template by doing:

{% if self.english_page and self.get_language != 'en' %}
    <a href="{{ self.english_page.url }}">{% trans "View in English" %}</a>
{% endif %}

{% if self.french_page and self.get_language != 'fr' %}
    <a href="{{ self.french_page.url }}">{% trans "View in French" %}</a>
{% endif %}

{% if self.spanish_page and self.get_language != 'es' %}
    <a href="{{ self.spanish_page.url }}">{% trans "View in Spanish" %}</a>
{% endif %}

Private pages

Users with publish permission on a page can set it to be private by clicking the ‘Privacy’ control in the top right corner of the page explorer or editing interface, and setting a password. Users visiting this page, or any of its subpages, will be prompted to enter a password before they can view the page.

Private pages work on Wagtail out of the box - the site implementer does not need to do anything to set them up. However, the default “password required” form is only a bare-bones HTML page, and site implementers may wish to replace this with a page customised to their site design.

Setting up a global “password required” page

By setting PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE in your Django settings file, you can specify the path of a template which will be used for all “password required” forms on the site (except for page types that specifically override it - see below):

PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE = 'myapp/password_required.html'

This template will receive the same set of context variables that the blocked page would pass to its own template via get_context() - including self to refer to the page object itself - plus the following additional variables (which override any of the page’s own context variables of the same name):

  • form - A Django form object for the password prompt; this will contain a field named password as its only visible field. A number of hidden fields may also be present, so the page must loop over form.hidden_fields if not using one of Django’s rendering helpers such as form.as_p.
  • action_url - The URL that the password form should be submitted to, as a POST request.

A basic template suitable for use as PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE might look like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Password required</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Password required</h1>
        <p>You need a password to access this page.</p>
        <form action="{{ action_url }}" method="POST">
            {% csrf_token %}

            {{ form.non_field_errors }}

            <div>
                {{ form.password.errors }}
                {{ form.password.label_tag }}
                {{ form.password }}
            </div>

            {% for field in form.hidden_fields %}
                {{ field }}
            {% endfor %}
            <input type="submit" value="Continue" />
        </form>
    </body>
</html>
Setting a “password required” page for a specific page type

The attribute password_required_template can be defined on a page model to use a custom template for the “password required” view, for that page type only. For example, if a site had a page type for displaying embedded videos along with a description, it might choose to use a custom “password required” template that displays the video description as usual, but shows the password form in place of the video embed.

class VideoPage(Page):
    ...
    password_required_template = 'video/password_required.html'

Customising Wagtail

Customising the page editing interface
Customising the tabbed interface

New in version 1.0.

As standard, Wagtail organises panels into three tabs: ‘Content’, ‘Promote’ and ‘Settings’. Depending on the requirements of your site, you may wish to customise this for specific page types - for example, adding an additional tab for sidebar content. This can be done by specifying an edit_handler property on the page model. For example:

from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import TabbedInterface, ObjectList

class BlogPage(Page):
    # field definitions omitted

    content_panels = [
        FieldPanel('title', classname="full title"),
        FieldPanel('date'),
        FieldPanel('body', classname="full"),
    ]
    sidebar_content_panels = [
        SnippetChooserPanel('advert', Advert),
        InlinePanel('related_links', label="Related links"),
    ]

    edit_handler = TabbedInterface([
        ObjectList(content_panels, heading='Content'),
        ObjectList(sidebar_content_panels, heading='Sidebar content'),
        ObjectList(Page.promote_panels, heading='Promote'),
        ObjectList(Page.settings_panels, heading='Settings', classname="settings"),
    ])
Rich Text (HTML)

Wagtail provides a general-purpose WYSIWYG editor for creating rich text content (HTML) and embedding media such as images, video, and documents. To include this in your models, use the RichTextField function when defining a model field:

from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel


class BookPage(Page):
    book_text = RichTextField()

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('body', classname="full"),
    ]

RichTextField inherits from Django’s basic TextField field, so you can pass any field parameters into RichTextField as if using a normal Django field. This field does not need a special panel and can be defined with FieldPanel.

However, template output from RichTextField is special and need to be filtered to preserve embedded content. See Rich text (filter).

If you’re interested in extending the capabilities of the Wagtail WYSIWYG editor (hallo.js), See Extending the WYSIWYG Editor (hallo.js).

Extending the WYSIWYG Editor (hallo.js)

To inject JavaScript into the Wagtail page editor, see the insert_editor_js hook. Once you have the hook in place and your hallo.js plugin loads into the Wagtail page editor, use the following JavaScript to register the plugin with hallo.js.

registerHalloPlugin(name, opts);

hallo.js plugin names are prefixed with the "IKS." namespace, but the name you pass into registerHalloPlugin() should be without the prefix. opts is an object passed into the plugin.

For information on developing custom hallo.js plugins, see the project’s page: https://github.com/bergie/hallo

Image Formats in the Rich Text Editor

On loading, Wagtail will search for any app with the file image_formats.py and execute the contents. This provides a way to customise the formatting options shown to the editor when inserting images in the RichTextField editor.

As an example, add a “thumbnail” format:

# image_formats.py
from wagtail.wagtailimages.formats import Format, register_image_format

register_image_format(Format('thumbnail', 'Thumbnail', 'richtext-image thumbnail', 'max-120x120'))

To begin, import the the Format class, register_image_format function, and optionally unregister_image_format function. To register a new Format, call the register_image_format with the Format object as the argument. The Format class takes the following constructor arguments:

name
The unique key used to identify the format. To unregister this format, call unregister_image_format with this string as the only argument.
label
The label used in the chooser form when inserting the image into the RichTextField.
classnames
The string to assign to the class attribute of the generated <img> tag.
filter_spec
The string specification to create the image rendition. For more, see the Using images in templates.

To unregister, call unregister_image_format with the string of the name of the Format as the only argument.

Custom branding

In your projects with Wagtail, you may wish to replace elements such as the Wagtail logo within the admin interface with your own branding. This can be done through Django’s template inheritance mechanism, along with the django-overextends package.

Install django-overextends with pip install django-overextends (or add django-overextends to your project’s requirements file), and add 'overextends' to your project’s INSTALLED_APPS. You now need to create a templates/wagtailadmin/ folder within one of your apps - this may be an existing one, or a new one created for this purpose, for example, dashboard. This app must be registered in INSTALLED_APPS before wagtail.wagtailadmin:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
  # ...

  'overextends',
  'dashboard',

  'wagtail.wagtailcore',
  'wagtail.wagtailadmin',

  # ...
)

The template blocks that are available to be overridden are as follows:

branding_login

To replace the login message, create a template file dashboard/templates/wagtailadmin/login.html that overrides the block branding_login:

{% overextends "wagtailadmin/login.html" %}

{% block branding_login %}Sign in to Frank's Site{% endblock %}
branding_welcome

To replace the welcome message on the dashboard, create a template file dashboard/templates/wagtailadmin/home.html that overrides the block branding_welcome:

{% overextends "wagtailadmin/home.html" %}

{% block branding_welcome %}Welcome to Frank's Site{% endblock %}

Third-party tutorials

Warning

The following list is a collection of tutorials and development notes from third-party developers. Some of the older links may not apply to the latest Wagtail versions.

Tip

We are working on a collection of Wagtail tutorials and best practices. Please tweet @WagtailCMS or contact us directly to share your Wagtail HOWTOs, development notes or site launches.

Reference

Pages

Wagtail requires a little careful setup to define the types of content that you want to present through your website. The basic unit of content in Wagtail is the Page, and all of your page-level content will inherit basic webpage-related properties from it. But for the most part, you will be defining content yourself, through the construction of Django models using Wagtail’s Page as a base.

Wagtail organizes content created from your models in a tree, which can have any structure and combination of model objects in it. Wagtail doesn’t prescribe ways to organize and interrelate your content, but here we’ve sketched out some strategies for organizing your models.

The presentation of your content, the actual webpages, includes the normal use of the Django template system. We’ll cover additional functionality that Wagtail provides at the template level later on.

Theory
Introduction to Trees

If you’re unfamiliar with trees as an abstract data type, you might want to review the concepts involved.

As a web developer, though, you probably already have a good understanding of trees as filesystem directories or paths. Wagtail pages can create the same structure, as each page in the tree has its own URL path, like so:

/
    people/
        nien-nunb/
        laura-roslin/
    events/
        captain-picard-day/
        winter-wrap-up/

The Wagtail admin interface uses the tree to organize content for editing, letting you navigate up and down levels in the tree through its Explorer menu. This method of organization is a good place to start in thinking about your own Wagtail models.

Nodes and Leaves

It might be handy to think of the Page-derived models you want to create as being one of two node types: parents and leaves. Wagtail isn’t prescriptive in this approach, but it’s a good place to start if you’re not experienced in structuring your own content types.

Nodes

Parent nodes on the Wagtail tree probably want to organize and display a browse-able index of their descendants. A blog, for instance, needs a way to show a list of individual posts.

A Parent node could provide its own function returning its descendant objects.

class EventPageIndex(Page):
    # ...
    def events(self):
        # Get list of live event pages that are descendants of this page
        events = EventPage.objects.live().descendant_of(self)

        # Filter events list to get ones that are either
        # running now or start in the future
        events = events.filter(date_from__gte=date.today())

        # Order by date
        events = events.order_by('date_from')

        return events

This example makes sure to limit the returned objects to pieces of content which make sense, specifically ones which have been published through Wagtail’s admin interface (live()) and are children of this node (descendant_of(self)). By setting a subpage_types class property in your model, you can specify which models are allowed to be set as children, and by setting a parent_page_types class property, you can specify which models are allowed to be parents of this page model. Wagtail will allow any Page-derived model by default. Regardless, it’s smart for a parent model to provide an index filtered to make sense.

Leaves

Leaves are the pieces of content itself, a page which is consumable, and might just consist of a bunch of properties. A blog page leaf might have some body text and an image. A person page leaf might have a photo, a name, and an address.

It might be helpful for a leaf to provide a way to back up along the tree to a parent, such as in the case of breadcrumbs navigation. The tree might also be deep enough that a leaf’s parent won’t be included in general site navigation.

The model for the leaf could provide a function that traverses the tree in the opposite direction and returns an appropriate ancestor:

class EventPage(Page):
    # ...
    def event_index(self):
        # Find closest ancestor which is an event index
        return self.get_ancestors().type(EventIndexPage).last()

If defined, subpage_types and parent_page_types will also limit the parent models allowed to contain a leaf. If not, Wagtail will allow any combination of parents and leafs to be associated in the Wagtail tree. Like with index pages, it’s a good idea to make sure that the index is actually of the expected model to contain the leaf.

Other Relationships

Your Page-derived models might have other interrelationships which extend the basic Wagtail tree or depart from it entirely. You could provide functions to navigate between siblings, such as a “Next Post” link on a blog page (post->post->post). It might make sense for subtrees to interrelate, such as in a discussion forum (forum->post->replies) Skipping across the hierarchy might make sense, too, as all objects of a certain model class might interrelate regardless of their ancestors (events = EventPage.objects.all). It’s largely up to the models to define their interrelations, the possibilities are really endless.

Anatomy of a Wagtail Request

For going beyond the basics of model definition and interrelation, it might help to know how Wagtail handles requests and constructs responses. In short, it goes something like:

  1. Django gets a request and routes through Wagtail’s URL dispatcher definitions
  2. Wagtail checks the hostname of the request to determine which Site record will handle this request.
  3. Starting from the root page of that site, Wagtail traverses the page tree, calling the route() method and letting each page model decide whether it will handle the request itself or pass it on to a child page.
  4. The page responsible for handling the request returns a RouteResult object from route(), which identifies the page along with any additional args/kwargs to be passed to serve().
  5. Wagtail calls serve(), which constructs a context using get_context()
  6. serve() finds a template to pass it to using get_template()
  7. A response object is returned by serve() and Django responds to the requester.

You can apply custom behavior to this process by overriding Page class methods such as route() and serve() in your own models. For examples, see Recipes.

Recipes
Overriding the serve() Method

Wagtail defaults to serving Page-derived models by passing self to a Django HTML template matching the model’s name, but suppose you wanted to serve something other than HTML? You can override the serve() method provided by the Page class and handle the Django request and response more directly.

Consider this example from the Wagtail demo site’s models.py, which serves an EventPage object as an iCal file if the format variable is set in the request:

class EventPage(Page):
    ...
    def serve(self, request):
        if "format" in request.GET:
            if request.GET['format'] == 'ical':
                # Export to ical format
                response = HttpResponse(
                    export_event(self, 'ical'),
                    content_type='text/calendar',
                )
                response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=' + self.slug + '.ics'
                return response
            else:
                # Unrecognised format error
                message = 'Could not export event\n\nUnrecognised format: ' + request.GET['format']
                return HttpResponse(message, content_type='text/plain')
        else:
            # Display event page as usual
            return super(EventPage, self).serve(request)

serve() takes a Django request object and returns a Django response object. Wagtail returns a TemplateResponse object with the template and context which it generates, which allows middleware to function as intended, so keep in mind that a simpler response object like a HttpResponse will not receive these benefits.

With this strategy, you could use Django or Python utilities to render your model in JSON or XML or any other format you’d like.

Adding Endpoints with Custom route() Methods

Note

A much simpler way of adding more endpoints to pages is provided by the wagtailroutablepage module.

Wagtail routes requests by iterating over the path components (separated with a forward slash /), finding matching objects based on their slug, and delegating further routing to that object’s model class. The Wagtail source is very instructive in figuring out what’s happening. This is the default route() method of the Page class:

class Page(...):

    ...

    def route(self, request, path_components):
        if path_components:
            # request is for a child of this page
            child_slug = path_components[0]
            remaining_components = path_components[1:]

            # find a matching child or 404
            try:
                subpage = self.get_children().get(slug=child_slug)
            except Page.DoesNotExist:
                raise Http404

            # delegate further routing
            return subpage.specific.route(request, remaining_components)

        else:
            # request is for this very page
            if self.live:
                # Return a RouteResult that will tell Wagtail to call
                # this page's serve() method
                return RouteResult(self)
            else:
                # the page matches the request, but isn't published, so 404
                raise Http404

route() takes the current object (self), the request object, and a list of the remaining path_components from the request URL. It either continues delegating routing by calling route() again on one of its children in the Wagtail tree, or ends the routing process by returning a RouteResult object or raising a 404 error.

The RouteResult object (defined in wagtail.wagtailcore.url_routing) encapsulates all the information Wagtail needs to call a page’s serve() method and return a final response: this information consists of the page object, and any additional args/kwargs to be passed to serve().

By overriding the route() method, we could create custom endpoints for each object in the Wagtail tree. One use case might be using an alternate template when encountering the print/ endpoint in the path. Another might be a REST API which interacts with the current object. Just to see what’s involved, lets make a simple model which prints out all of its child path components.

First, models.py:

from django.shortcuts import render
from wagtail.wagtailcore.url_routing import RouteResult
from django.http.response import Http404
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel, MultiFieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page

...

class Echoer(Page):

    def route(self, request, path_components):
        if path_components:
            # tell Wagtail to call self.serve() with an additional 'path_components' kwarg
            return RouteResult(self, kwargs={'path_components': path_components})
        else:
            if self.live:
                # tell Wagtail to call self.serve() with no further args
                return RouteResult(self)
            else:
                raise Http404

    def serve(self, path_components=[]):
        return render(request, self.template, {
            'self': self,
            'echo': ' '.join(path_components),
        })

Echoer.content_panels = [
    FieldPanel('title', classname="full title"),
]

Echoer.promote_panels = [
    MultiFieldPanel(Page.promote_panels, "Common page configuration"),
]

This model, Echoer, doesn’t define any properties, but does subclass Page so objects will be able to have a custom title and slug. The template just has to display our {{ echo }} property.

Now, once creating a new Echoer page in the Wagtail admin titled “Echo Base,” requests such as:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/echo-base/tauntaun/kennel/bed/and/breakfast/

Will return:

tauntaun kennel bed and breakfast

Be careful if you’re introducing new required arguments to the serve() method - Wagtail still needs to be able to display a default view of the page for previewing and moderation, and by default will attempt to do this by calling serve() with a request object and no further arguments. If your serve() method does not accept that as a method signature, you will need to override the page’s serve_preview() method to call serve() with suitable arguments:

def serve_preview(self, request, mode_name):
    return self.serve(request, color='purple')
Tagging

Wagtail provides tagging capability through the combination of two django modules, taggit and modelcluster. taggit provides a model for tags which is extended by modelcluster, which in turn provides some magical database abstraction which makes drafts and revisions possible in Wagtail. It’s a tricky recipe, but the net effect is a many-to-many relationship between your model and a tag class reserved for your model.

Using an example from the Wagtail demo site, here’s what the tag model and the relationship field looks like in models.py:

from modelcluster.fields import ParentalKey
from modelcluster.tags import ClusterTaggableManager
from taggit.models import Tag, TaggedItemBase
...
class BlogPageTag(TaggedItemBase):
    content_object = ParentalKey('demo.BlogPage', related_name='tagged_items')
...
class BlogPage(Page):
    ...
    tags = ClusterTaggableManager(through=BlogPageTag, blank=True)

BlogPage.promote_panels = [
    ...
    FieldPanel('tags'),
]

Wagtail’s admin provides a nice interface for inputting tags into your content, with typeahead tag completion and friendly tag icons.

Now that we have the many-to-many tag relationship in place, we can fit in a way to render both sides of the relation. Here’s more of the Wagtail demo site models.py, where the index model for BlogPage is extended with logic for filtering the index by tag:

class BlogIndexPage(Page):
    ...
    def serve(self, request):
        # Get blogs
        blogs = self.blogs

        # Filter by tag
        tag = request.GET.get('tag')
        if tag:
            blogs = blogs.filter(tags__name=tag)

        return render(request, self.template, {
            'self': self,
            'blogs': blogs,
        })

Here, blogs.filter(tags__name=tag) invokes a reverse Django queryset filter on the BlogPageTag model to optionally limit the BlogPage objects sent to the template for rendering. Now, lets render both sides of the relation by showing the tags associated with an object and a way of showing all of the objects associated with each tag. This could be added to the blog_page.html template:

{% for tag in self.tags.all %}
    <a href="{% pageurl self.blog_index %}?tag={{ tag }}">{{ tag }}</a>
{% endfor %}

Iterating through self.tags.all will display each tag associated with self, while the link(s) back to the index make use of the filter option added to the BlogIndexPage model. A Django query could also use the tagged_items related name field to get BlogPage objects associated with a tag.

This is just one possible way of creating a taxonomy for Wagtail objects. With all of the components for a taxonomy available through Wagtail, you should be able to fulfill even the most exotic taxonomic schemes.

Setting up the page editor interface

Wagtail provides a highly-customisable editing interface consisting of several components:

  • Fields — built-in content types to augment the basic types provided by Django
  • Panels — the basic editing blocks for fields, groups of fields, and related object clusters
  • Choosers — interfaces for finding related objects in a ForeignKey relationship

Configuring your models to use these components will shape the Wagtail editor to your needs. Wagtail also provides an API for injecting custom CSS and JavaScript for further customisation, including extending the hallo.js rich text editor.

There is also an Edit Handler API for creating your own Wagtail editor components.

Defining Panels

A “panel” is the basic editing block in Wagtail. Wagtail will automatically pick the appropriate editing widget for most Django field types; implementers just need to add a panel for each field they want to show in the Wagtail page editor, in the order they want them to appear.

Wagtail provides a tabbed interface to help organise panels. Three such tabs are provided:

  • content_panels is the main tab, used for the bulk of your model’s fields.
  • promote_panels is suggested for organising fields regarding the promotion of the page around the site and the Internet. For example, a field to dictate whether the page should show in site-wide menus, descriptive text that should appear in site search results, SEO-friendly titles, OpenGraph meta tag content and other machine-readable information.
  • settings_panels is essentially for non-copy fields. By default it contains the page’s scheduled publishing fields. Other suggested fields could include a field to switch between one layout/style and another.

Let’s look at an example of a panel definition:

class ExamplePage(Page):
  # field definitions omitted
  ...

  content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
    FieldPanel('body', classname="full"),
    FieldRowPanel([
      FieldPanel('start_date', classname="col3"),
      FieldPanel('end_date', classname="col3"),
    ]),
    ImageChooserPanel('splash_image'),
    DocumentChooserPanel('free_download'),
    PageChooserPanel('related_page'),
  ]

  promote_panels = [
    MultiFieldPanel(Page.promote_panels, "Common page configuration"),
  ]

After the Page-derived class definition, just add lists of panel definitions to order and organise the Wagtail page editing interface for your model.

Available panel types
FieldPanel
class wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handers.FieldPanel(field_name, classname=None, widget=None)

This is the panel used for basic Django field types.

field_name

This is the name of the class property used in your model definition.

classname

This is a string of optional CSS classes given to the panel which are used in formatting and scripted interactivity. By default, panels are formatted as inset fields.

The CSS class full can be used to format the panel so it covers the full width of the Wagtail page editor.

The CSS class title can be used to mark a field as the source for auto-generated slug strings.

widget(optional)

This parameter allows you to specify a django form widget to use instead of the default widget for this field type.

MultiFieldPanel
class wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handers.MultiFieldPanel(children, heading="", classname=None)

This panel condenses several FieldPanel` s or choosers, from a list or tuple, under a single heading string.

children

A list or tuple of child panels

heading

A heading for the fields

Collapsing MultiFieldPanels to save space

By default, MultiFieldPanel s are expanded and not collapsible. Adding collapsible to classname will enable the collapse control. Adding both collapsible and collapsed to the classname parameter will load the editor page with the MultiFieldPanel collapsed under its heading.

content_panels = [
    MultiFieldPanel(
        [
            ImageChooserPanel('cover'),
            DocumentChooserPanel('book_file'),
            PageChooserPanel('publisher'),
        ],
        heading="Collection of Book Fields",
        classname="collapsible collapsed"
    ),
]
InlinePanel
class wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handers.InlinePanel(relation_name, panels=None, classname=None, label='', help_text='')

This panel allows for the creation of a “cluster” of related objects over a join to a separate model, such as a list of related links or slides to an image carousel.

This is a poweful but complex feature which will take some space to cover, so we’ll skip over it for now. For a full explanation on the usage of InlinePanel, see Inline Panels and Model Clusters.

FieldRowPanel
class wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handers.FieldRowPanel(children, classname=None)

This panel creates a columnar layout in the editing interface, where each of the child Panels appears alongside each other rather than below.

Use of FieldRowPanel particularly helps reduce the “snow-blindness” effect of seeing so many fields on the page, for complex models. It also improves the perceived association between fields of a similar nature. For example if you created a model representing an “Event” which had a starting date and ending date, it may be intuitive to find the start and end date on the same “row”.

FieldRowPanel should be used in combination with col* class names added to each of the child Panels of the FieldRowPanel. The Wagtail editing interface is laid out using a grid system, in which the maximum width of the editor is 12 columns. Classes col1-col12 can be applied to each child of a FieldRowPanel. The class col3 will ensure that field appears 3 columns wide or a quarter the width. col4 would cause the field to be 4 columns wide, or a third the width.

children

A list or tuple of child panels to display on the row

classname

A class to apply to the FieldRowPanel as a whole

PageChooserPanel
class wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handers.PageChooserPanel(field_name, model=None)

You can explicitly link Page-derived models together using the Page model and PageChooserPanel.

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import PageChooserPanel


class BookPage(Page):
    publisher = models.ForeignKey(
        'wagtailcore.Page',
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+',
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        PageChooserPanel('related_page', 'demo.PublisherPage'),
    ]

PageChooserPanel takes two arguments: a field name and an optional page type. Specifying a page type (in the form of an "appname.modelname" string) will filter the chooser to display only pages of that type.

ImageChooserPanel
class wagtail.wagtailimages.edit_handlers.ImageChooserPanel(field_name)

Wagtail includes a unified image library, which you can access in your models through the Image model and the ImageChooserPanel chooser. Here’s how:

from wagtail.wagtailimages.models import Image
from wagtail.wagtailimages.edit_handlers import ImageChooserPanel


class BookPage(Page):
    cover = models.ForeignKey(
        'wagtailimages.Image',
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+'
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        ImageChooserPanel('cover'),
    ]

Django’s default behaviour is to “cascade” deletions through a ForeignKey relationship, which may not be what you want. This is why the null, blank, and on_delete parameters should be set to allow for an empty field. (See Django model field reference (on_delete) ). ImageChooserPanel takes only one argument: the name of the field.

Displaying Image objects in a template requires the use of a template tag. See Using images in templates.

DocumentChooserPanel
class wagtail.wagtaildocs.edit_handlers.DocumentChooserPanel(field_name)

For files in other formats, Wagtail provides a generic file store through the Document model:

from wagtail.wagtaildocs.models import Document
from wagtail.wagtaildocs.edit_handlers import DocumentChooserPanel


class BookPage(Page):
    book_file = models.ForeignKey(
        'wagtaildocs.Document',
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+'
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        DocumentChooserPanel('book_file'),
    ]

As with images, Wagtail documents should also have the appropriate extra parameters to prevent cascade deletions across a ForeignKey relationship. DocumentChooserPanel takes only one argument: the name of the field.

SnippetChooserPanel
class wagtail.wagtailsnippets.edit_handlers.SnippetChooserPanel(field_name, model)

Snippets are vanilla Django models you create yourself without a Wagtail-provided base class. So using them as a field in a page requires specifying your own appname.modelname. A chooser, SnippetChooserPanel, is provided which takes the field name and snippet class.

from wagtail.wagtailsnippets.edit_handlers import SnippetChooserPanel

class BookPage(Page):
    advert = models.ForeignKey(
        'demo.Advert',
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+'
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        SnippetChooserPanel('advert', Advert),
    ]

See Snippets for more information.

Built-in Fields and Choosers

Django’s field types are automatically recognised and provided with an appropriate widget for input. Just define that field the normal Django way and pass the field name into FieldPanel when defining your panels. Wagtail will take care of the rest.

Here are some Wagtail-specific types that you might include as fields in your models.

Field Customisation

By adding CSS classes to your panel definitions or adding extra parameters to your field definitions, you can control much of how your fields will display in the Wagtail page editing interface. Wagtail’s page editing interface takes much of its behaviour from Django’s admin, so you may find many options for customisation covered there. (See Django model field reference ).

Full-Width Input

Use classname="full" to make a field (input element) stretch the full width of the Wagtail page editor. This will not work if the field is encapsulated in a MultiFieldPanel, which places its child fields into a formset.

Titles

Use classname="title" to make Page’s built-in title field stand out with more vertical padding.

Required Fields

To make input or chooser selection mandatory for a field, add blank=False to its model definition. (See Django model field reference (blank) ).

Hiding Fields

Without a panel definition, a default form field (without label) will be used to represent your fields. If you intend to hide a field on the Wagtail page editor, define the field with editable=False (See Django model field reference (editable) ).

Inline Panels and Model Clusters

The django-modelcluster module allows for streamlined relation of extra models to a Wagtail page. For instance, you can create objects related through a ForeignKey relationship on the fly and save them to a draft revision of a Page object. Normally, your related objects “cluster” would need to be created beforehand (or asynchronously) before linking them to a Page.

Let’s look at the example of adding related links to a Page-derived model. We want to be able to add as many as we like, assign an order, and do all of this without leaving the page editing screen.

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Orderable, Page
from modelcluster.fields import ParentalKey

# The abstract model for related links, complete with panels
class RelatedLink(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    link_external = models.URLField("External link", blank=True)

    panels = [
        FieldPanel('title'),
        FieldPanel('link_external'),
    ]

    class Meta:
        abstract = True

# The real model which combines the abstract model, an
# Orderable helper class, and what amounts to a ForeignKey link
# to the model we want to add related links to (BookPage)
class BookPageRelatedLinks(Orderable, RelatedLink):
    page = ParentalKey('demo.BookPage', related_name='related_links')

class BookPage(Page):
  # ...

  content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
    InlinePanel('related_links', label="Related Links"),
  ]

The RelatedLink class is a vanilla Django abstract model. The BookPageRelatedLinks model extends it with capability for being ordered in the Wagtail interface via the Orderable class as well as adding a page property which links the model to the BookPage model we’re adding the related links objects to. Finally, in the panel definitions for BookPage, we’ll add an InlinePanel to provide an interface for it all. Let’s look again at the parameters that InlinePanel accepts:

InlinePanel( relation_name, panels=None, label='', help_text='' )

The relation_name is the related_name label given to the cluster’s ParentalKey relation. You can add the panels manually or make them part of the cluster model. Finally, label and help_text provide a heading and caption, respectively, for the Wagtail editor.

Changed in version 1.0: In previous versions, it was necessary to pass the base model as the first parameter to InlinePanel; this is no longer required.

For another example of using model clusters, see Tagging

For more on django-modelcluster, visit the django-modelcluster github project page.

Model Reference

This document contains reference information for the model classes inside the wagtailcore module.

Page
class wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page(id, path, depth, numchild, title, slug, content_type_id, live, has_unpublished_changes, url_path, owner_id, seo_title, show_in_menus, search_description, go_live_at, expire_at, expired, locked, first_published_at, latest_revision_created_at)

Database fields:

title

(text)

Human-readable title of the page.

slug

(text)

This is used for constructing the page’s URL.

For example: http://domain.com/blog/[my-slug]/

content_type

(foreign key to django.contrib.contenttypes.models.ContentType)

A foreign key to the ContentType object that represents the specific model of this page.

live

(boolean)

A boolean that is set to True if the page is published.

Note: this field defaults to True meaning that any pages that are created programmatically will be published by default.

has_unpublished_changes

(boolean)

A boolean that is set to True when the page is either in draft or published with draft changes.

owner

(foreign key to user model)

A foreign key to the user that created the page.

first_published_at

(date/time)

The date/time when the page was first published.

seo_title

(text)

Alternate SEO-crafted title, for use in the page’s <title> HTML tag.

search_description

(text)

SEO-crafted description of the content, used for search indexing. This is also suitable for the page’s <meta name="description"> HTML tag.

show_in_menus

(boolean)

Toggles whether the page should be included in site-wide menus.

This is used by the in_menu() QuerySet filter.

In addition to the model fields provided, Page has many properties and methods that you may wish to reference, use, or override in creating your own models. Those listed here are relatively straightforward to use, but consult the Wagtail source code for a full view of what’s possible.

specific

Decorator that converts a method with a single self argument into a property cached on the instance.

specific_class

Decorator that converts a method with a single self argument into a property cached on the instance.

url

Return the ‘most appropriate’ URL for referring to this page from the pages we serve, within the Wagtail backend and actual website templates; this is the local URL (starting with ‘/’) if we’re only running a single site (i.e. we know that whatever the current page is being served from, this link will be on the same domain), and the full URL (with domain) if not. Return None if the page is not routable.

full_url

Return the full URL (including protocol / domain) to this page, or None if it is not routable

route(request, path_components)
serve(request, *args, **kwargs)
get_context(request, *args, **kwargs)
get_template(request, *args, **kwargs)
preview_modes

A list of (internal_name, display_name) tuples for the modes in which this page can be displayed for preview/moderation purposes. Ordinarily a page will only have one display mode, but subclasses of Page can override this - for example, a page containing a form might have a default view of the form, and a post-submission ‘thankyou’ page

serve_preview(request, mode_name)

Return an HTTP response for use in page previews. Normally this would be equivalent to self.serve(request), since we obviously want the preview to be indicative of how it looks on the live site. However, there are a couple of cases where this is not appropriate, and custom behaviour is required:

1) The page has custom routing logic that derives some additional required args/kwargs to be passed to serve(). The routing mechanism is bypassed when previewing, so there’s no way to know what args we should pass. In such a case, the page model needs to implement its own version of serve_preview.

2) The page has several different renderings that we would like to be able to see when previewing - for example, a form page might have one rendering that displays the form, and another rendering to display a landing page when the form is posted. This can be done by setting a custom preview_modes list on the page model - Wagtail will allow the user to specify one of those modes when previewing, and pass the chosen mode_name to serve_preview so that the page model can decide how to render it appropriately. (Page models that do not specify their own preview_modes list will always receive an empty string as mode_name.)

Any templates rendered during this process should use the ‘request’ object passed here - this ensures that request.user and other properties are set appropriately for the wagtail user bar to be displayed. This request will always be a GET.

get_ancestors(inclusive=False)
get_descendants(inclusive=False)
get_siblings(inclusive=True)
search_fields

A list of fields to be indexed by the search engine. See Search docs Indexing extra fields

subpage_types

A whitelist of page models which can be created as children of this page type e.g a BlogIndex page might allow BlogPage, but not JobPage e.g

class BlogIndex(Page):
    subpage_types = ['mysite.BlogPage', 'mysite.BlogArchivePage']

The creation of child pages can be blocked altogether for a given page by setting it’s subpage_types attribute to an empty array e.g

class BlogPage(Page):
    subpage_types = []
parent_page_types

A whitelist of page models which are allowed as parent page types e.g a BlogPage may only allow itself to be created below the BlogIndex page e.g

class BlogPage(Page):
    parent_page_types = ['mysite.BlogIndexPage']

Pages can block themselves from being created at all by setting parent_page_types to an empty array (this is useful for creating unique pages that should only be created once) e.g

class HiddenPage(Page):
    parent_page_types = []
password_required_template

Defines which template file should be used to render the login form for Protected pages using this model. This overrides the default, defined using PASSWORD_REQUIRED_TEMPLATE in your settings. See Private pages

Site

The Site model is useful for multi-site installations as it allows an administrator to configure which part of the tree to use for each hostname that the server responds on.

This configuration is used by the SiteMiddleware middleware class which checks each request against this configuration and appends the Site object to the Django request object.

class wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Site(id, hostname, port, root_page_id, is_default_site)

Database fields:

hostname

(text)

This is the hostname of the site, excluding the scheme, port and path.

For example: www.mysite.com

Note

If you’re looking for how to get the root url of a site, use the root_url attribute.

port

(number)

This is the port number that the site responds on.

root_page

(foreign key to Page)

This is a link to the root page of the site. This page will be what appears at the / URL on the site and would usually be a homepage.

is_default_site

(boolean)

This is set to True if the site is the default. Only one site can be the default.

The default site is used as a fallback in situations where a site with the required hostname/port couldn’t be found.

Methods and attributes:

static find_for_request(request)

Find the site object responsible for responding to this HTTP request object. Try:

  • unique hostname first
  • then hostname and port
  • if there is no matching hostname at all, or no matching hostname:port combination, fall back to the unique default site, or raise an exception

NB this means that high-numbered ports on an extant hostname may still be routed to a different hostname which is set as the default

root_url

This returns the URL of the site. It is calculated from the hostname and the port fields.

The scheme part of the URL is calculated based on value of the port field:

  • 80 = http://
  • 443 = https://
  • Everything else will use the http:// scheme and the port will be appended to the end of the hostname (eg. http://mysite.com:8000/)
static get_site_root_paths()

Return a list of (root_path, root_url) tuples, most specific path first - used to translate url_paths into actual URLs with hostnames

PageRevision

Every time a page is edited a new PageRevision is created and saved to the database. It can be used to find the full history of all changes that have been made to a page and it also provides a place for new changes to be kept before going live.

  • Revisions can be created from any Page object calling its create_revision() method
  • The content of the page is JSON-serialised and stored in the content_json field
  • You can retrieve a PageRevision as a Page object by calling the as_page_object() method
class wagtail.wagtailcore.models.PageRevision(id, page_id, submitted_for_moderation, created_at, user_id, content_json, approved_go_live_at)

Database fields:

page

(foreign key to Page)

submitted_for_moderation

(boolean)

True if this revision is in moderation

created_at

(date/time)

This is the time the revision was created

user

(foreign key to user model)

This links to the user that created the revision

content_json

(text)

This field contains the JSON content for the page at the time the revision was created

Managers:

objects

This manager is used to retrieve all of the PageRevision objects in the database

Example:

PageRevision.objects.all()
submitted_revisions

This manager is used to retrieve all of the PageRevision objects that are awaiting moderator approval

Example:

PageRevision.submitted_revisions.all()

Methods and attributes:

as_page_object()

This method retrieves this revision as an instance of its Page subclass.

approve_moderation()

Calling this on a revision that’s in moderation will mark it as approved and publish it

reject_moderation()

Calling this on a revision that’s in moderation will mark it as rejected

is_latest_revision()

Returns True if this revision is its page’s latest revision

publish()

Calling this will copy the content of this revision into the live page object. If the page is in draft, it will be published.

GroupPagePermission
class wagtail.wagtailcore.models.GroupPagePermission(id, group_id, page_id, permission_type)

Database fields:

group

(foreign key to django.contrib.auth.models.Group)

page

(foreign key to Page)

permission_type

(choice list)

PageViewRestriction
class wagtail.wagtailcore.models.PageViewRestriction(id, page_id, password)

Database fields:

page

(foreign key to Page)

password

(text)

Orderable (abstract)
class wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Orderable(*args, **kwargs)

Database fields:

sort_order

(number)

Page QuerySet reference

All models that inherit from Page are given some extra QuerySet methods accessible from their .objects attribute.

Examples

  • Selecting only live pages

    live_pages = Page.objects.live()

  • Selecting published EventPages that are descendants of events_index

    events = EventPage.objects.live().descendant_of(events_index)

  • Getting a list of menu items

    # This gets a QuerySet of live children of the homepage with ``show_in_menus`` set
menu_items = homepage.get_children().live().in_menu()
Reference
class wagtail.wagtailcore.query.PageQuerySet(model=None, query=None, using=None, hints=None)
live()

This filters the QuerySet to only contain published pages.

Example:

published_pages = Page.objects.live()
not_live()

This filters the QuerySet to only contain unpublished pages.

Example:

unpublished_pages = Page.objects.not_live()
in_menu()

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that are in the menus.

Example:

# Build a menu from live pages that are children of the homepage
menu_items = homepage.get_children().live().in_menu()

Note

To put your page in menus, set the show_in_menus flag to true:

# Add 'my_page' to the menu
my_page.show_in_menus = True
page(other)

This filters the QuerySet so it only contains the specified page.

Example:

# Append an extra page to a QuerySet
new_queryset = old_queryset | Page.objects.page(page_to_add)
not_page(other)

This filters the QuerySet so it doesn’t contain the specified page.

Example:

# Remove a page from a QuerySet
new_queryset = old_queryset & Page.objects.not_page(page_to_remove)
descendant_of(other, inclusive=False)

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that descend from the specified page.

If inclusive is set to True, it will also contain the page itself (instead of just its descendants).

Example:

# Get EventPages that are under the special_events Page
special_events = EventPage.objects.descendant_of(special_events_index)

# Alternative way
special_events = special_events_index.get_descendants()
not_descendant_of(other, inclusive=False)

This filters the QuerySet to not contain any pages that descend from the specified page.

If inclusive is set to True, it will also exclude the specified page.

Example:

# Get EventPages that are not under the archived_events Page
non_archived_events = EventPage.objects.not_descendant_of(archived_events_index)
child_of(other)

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that are direct children of the specified page.

Example:

# Get a list of sections
sections = Page.objects.child_of(homepage)

# Alternative way
sections = homepage.get_children()
ancestor_of(other, inclusive=False)

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that are ancestors of the specified page.

If inclusive is set to True, it will also include the specified page.

Example:

# Get the current section
current_section = Page.objects.ancestor_of(current_page).child_of(homepage).first()

# Alternative way
current_section = current_page.get_ancestors().child_of(homepage).first()
not_ancestor_of(other, inclusive=False)

This filters the QuerySet to not contain any pages that are ancestors of the specified page.

If inclusive is set to True, it will also exclude the specified page.

Example:

# Get the other sections
other_sections = Page.objects.not_ancestor_of(current_page).child_of(homepage)
sibling_of(other, inclusive=True)

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that are siblings of the specified page.

By default, inclusive is set to True so it will include the specified page in the results.

If inclusive is set to False, the page will be excluded from the results.

Example:

# Get list of siblings
siblings = Page.objects.sibling_of(current_page)

# Alternative way
siblings = current_page.get_siblings()
public()

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that are not in a private section

See: Private pages

Note

This doesn’t filter out unpublished pages. If you want to only have published public pages, use .live().public()

Example:

# Find all the pages that are viewable by the public
all_pages = Page.objects.live().public()
search(query_string, fields=None, backend='default')

This runs a search query on all the pages in the QuerySet

See: Searching Pages

Example:

# Search future events
results = EventPage.objects.live().filter(date__gt=timezone.now()).search("Hello")
type(model)

This filters the QuerySet to only contain pages that are an instance of the specified model (including subclasses).

Example:

# Find all pages that are of type AbstractEmailForm, or a descendant of it
form_pages = Page.objects.type(AbstractEmailForm)
unpublish()

This unpublishes all pages in the QuerySet

Example:

# Unpublish current_page and all of its children
Page.objects.descendant_of(current_page, inclusive=True).unpublish()

Contrib modules

Wagtail ships with a variety of extra optional modules.

Form builder

The wagtailforms module allows you to set up single-page forms, such as a ‘Contact us’ form, as pages of a Wagtail site. It provides a set of base models that site implementers can extend to create their own FormPage type with their own site-specific templates. Once a page type has been set up in this way, editors can build forms within the usual page editor, consisting of any number of fields. Form submissions are stored for later retrieval through a new ‘Forms’ section within the Wagtail admin interface; in addition, they can be optionally e-mailed to an address specified by the editor.

Usage

Add wagtail.wagtailforms to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
   ...
   'wagtail.wagtailforms',
]

Within the models.py of one of your apps, create a model that extends wagtailforms.models.AbstractEmailForm:

from modelcluster.fields import ParentalKey
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import (FieldPanel, InlinePanel,
    MultiFieldPanel)
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailforms.models import AbstractEmailForm, AbstractFormField

class FormField(AbstractFormField):
    page = ParentalKey('FormPage', related_name='form_fields')

class FormPage(AbstractEmailForm):
    intro = RichTextField(blank=True)
    thank_you_text = RichTextField(blank=True)

FormPage.content_panels = [
    FieldPanel('title', classname="full title"),
    FieldPanel('intro', classname="full"),
    InlinePanel('form_fields', label="Form fields"),
    FieldPanel('thank_you_text', classname="full"),
    MultiFieldPanel([
        FieldPanel('to_address', classname="full"),
        FieldPanel('from_address', classname="full"),
        FieldPanel('subject', classname="full"),
    ], "Email")
]

AbstractEmailForm defines the fields to_address, from_address and subject, and expects form_fields to be defined. Any additional fields are treated as ordinary page content - note that FormPage is responsible for serving both the form page itself and the landing page after submission, so the model definition should include all necessary content fields for both of those views.

If you do not want your form page type to offer form-to-email functionality, you can inherit from AbstractForm instead of AbstractEmailForm, and omit the to_address, from_address and subject fields from the content_panels definition.

You now need to create two templates named form_page.html and form_page_landing.html (where form_page is the underscore-formatted version of the class name). form_page.html differs from a standard Wagtail template in that it is passed a variable form, containing a Django Form object, in addition to the usual self variable. A very basic template for the form would thus be:

{% load wagtailcore_tags %}
<html>
    <head>
        <title>{{ self.title }}</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>{{ self.title }}</h1>
        {{ self.intro|richtext }}
        <form action="{% pageurl self %}" method="POST">
            {% csrf_token %}
            {{ form.as_p }}
            <input type="submit">
        </form>
    </body>
</html>

form_page_landing.html is a regular Wagtail template, displayed after the user makes a successful form submission.

Static site generator

This document describes how to render your Wagtail site into static HTML files on your local file system, Amazon S3 or Google App Engine, using django medusa and the wagtail.contrib.wagtailmedusa module.

Note

An alternative module based on the django-bakery package is available as a third-party contribution: https://github.com/mhnbcu/wagtailbakery

Installing django-medusa

First, install django-medusa and django-sendfile from pip:

pip install django-medusa django-sendfile

Then add django_medusa and wagtail.contrib.wagtailmedusa to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
   ...
   'django_medusa',
   'wagtail.contrib.wagtailmedusa',
]

Define MEDUSA_RENDERER_CLASS, MEDUSA_DEPLOY_DIR and SENDFILE_BACKEND in settings:

MEDUSA_RENDERER_CLASS = 'django_medusa.renderers.DiskStaticSiteRenderer'
MEDUSA_DEPLOY_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'build')
SENDFILE_BACKEND = 'sendfile.backends.simple'
Rendering

To render a site, run ./manage.py staticsitegen. This will render the entire website and place the HTML in a folder called medusa_output. The static and media folders need to be copied into this folder manually after the rendering is complete. This feature inherits django-medusa‘s ability to render your static site to Amazon S3 or Google App Engine; see the medusa docs for configuration details.

To test, open the medusa_output folder in a terminal and run python -m SimpleHTTPServer.

Advanced topics
GET parameters

Pages which require GET parameters (e.g. for pagination) don’t generate a suitable file name for the generated HTML files.

Wagtail provides a mixin (wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models.RoutablePageMixin) which allows you to embed a Django URL configuration into a page. This allows you to give the subpages a URL like /page/1/ which work well with static site generation.

Example:

from wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models import RoutablePageMixin, route


class BlogIndex(Page, RoutablePageMixin):
    ...

    @route(r'^$', name='main')
    @route(r'^page/(?P<page>\d+)/$', name='page')
    def serve_page(self, request, page=1):
        ...

Then in the template, you can use the {% routablepageurl %} tag to link between the pages:

{% load wagtailroutablepage_tags %}

{% if results.has_previous %}
    <a href="{% routablepageurl self 'page' results.previous_page_number %}">Next page</a>
{% else %}

{% if results.has_next %}
    <a href="{% routablepageurl self 'page' results.next_page_number %}">Next page</a>
{% else %}

Next, you have to tell the wagtailmedusa module about your custom routing...

Rendering pages which use custom routing

For page types that override the route method, we need to let django-medusa know which URLs it responds on. This is done by overriding the get_static_site_paths method to make it yield one string per URL path.

For example, the BlogIndex above would need to yield one URL for each page of results:

def get_static_site_paths(self):
    # Get page count
    page_count = ...

    # Yield a path for each page
    for page in range(page_count):
        yield '/%d/' % (page + 1)

    # Yield from superclass
    for path in super(BlogIndex, self).get_static_site_paths():
        yield path
Sitemap generator

This document describes how to create XML sitemaps for your Wagtail website using the wagtail.contrib.wagtailsitemaps module.

Basic configuration

You firstly need to add "wagtail.contrib.wagtailsitemaps" to INSTALLED_APPS in your Django settings file:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...

    "wagtail.contrib.wagtailsitemaps",
]

Then, in urls.py, you need to add a link to the wagtail.contrib.wagtailsitemaps.views.sitemap view which generates the sitemap:

from wagtail.contrib.wagtailsitemaps.views import sitemap

urlpatterns = [
    ...

    url('^sitemap\.xml$', sitemap),
]

You should now be able to browse to /sitemap.xml and see the sitemap working. By default, all published pages in your website will be added to the site map.

Customising
URLs

The Page class defines a get_sitemap_urls method which you can override to customise sitemaps per Page instance. This method must return a list of dictionaries, one dictionary per URL entry in the sitemap. You can exclude pages from the sitemap by returning an empty list.

Each dictionary can contain the following:

  • location (required) - This is the full URL path to add into the sitemap.
  • lastmod - A python date or datetime set to when the page was last modified.
  • changefreq
  • priority

You can add more but you will need to override the wagtailsitemaps/sitemap.xml template in order for them to be displayed in the sitemap.

Cache

By default, sitemaps are cached for 100 minutes. You can change this by setting WAGTAILSITEMAPS_CACHE_TIMEOUT in your Django settings to the number of seconds you would like the cache to last for.

Frontend cache invalidator
    Changed in version 0.7:

  • Multiple backend support added

  • Cloudflare support added

Many websites use a frontend cache such as Varnish, Squid or Cloudflare to gain extra performance. The downside of using a frontend cache though is that they don’t respond well to updating content and will often keep an old version of a page cached after it has been updated.

This document describes how to configure Wagtail to purge old versions of pages from a frontend cache whenever a page gets updated.

Setting it up

Firstly, add "wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache" to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
   ...

   "wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache"
]

Changed in version 0.8: Signal handlers are now automatically registered in Django 1.7 and upwards

The wagtailfrontendcache module provides a set of signal handlers which will automatically purge the cache whenever a page is published or deleted.

If you are using Django version 1.7 or newer, these signal handlers are automatically registered when the wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache app is loaded. Otherwise, they must be registered as your application starts up. This can be done by placing the following code in your urls.py:

# urls.py
from wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.signal_handlers import register_signal_handlers
register_signal_handlers()
Varnish/Squid

Add a new item into the WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE setting and set the BACKEND parameter to wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.backends.HTTPBackend. This backend requires an extra parameter LOCATION which points to where the cache is running (this must be a direct connection to the server and cannot go through another proxy).

# settings.py

WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE = {
    'varnish': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.backends.HTTPBackend',
        'LOCATION': 'http://localhost:8000',
    },
}

Finally, make sure you have configured your frontend cache to accept PURGE requests:

Cloudflare

Firstly, you need to register an account with Cloudflare if you haven’t already got one. You can do this here: Cloudflare Sign up

Add an item into the WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE and set the BACKEND parameter to wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.backends.CloudflareBackend. This backend requires two extra parameters, EMAIL (your Cloudflare account email) and TOKEN (your API token from Cloudflare).

# settings.py

WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE = {
    'cloudflare': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.backends.CloudflareBackend',
        'EMAIL': 'your-cloudflare-email-address@example.com',
        'TOKEN': 'your cloudflare api token',
    },
}
Advanced usage
Invalidating more than one URL per page

By default, Wagtail will only purge one URL per page. If your page has more than one URL to be purged, you will need to override the get_cached_paths method on your page type.

class BlogIndexPage(Page):
    def get_blog_items(self):
        # This returns a Django paginator of blog items in this section
        return Paginator(self.get_children().live().type(BlogPage), 10)

    def get_cached_paths(self):
        # Yield the main URL
        yield '/'

        # Yield one URL per page in the paginator to make sure all pages are purged
        for page_number in range(1, self.get_blog_items().num_pages):
            yield '/?page=' + str(page_number)
Invalidating index pages

Another problem is pages that list other pages (such as a blog index) will not be purged when a blog entry gets added, changed or deleted. You may want to purge the blog index page so the updates are added into the listing quickly.

This can be solved by using the purge_page_from_cache utility function which can be found in the wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.utils module.

Let’s take the the above BlogIndexPage as an example. We need to register a signal handler to run when one of the BlogPages get updated/deleted. This signal handler should call the purge_page_from_cache function on all BlogIndexPages that contain the BlogPage being updated/deleted.

# models.py
from django.dispatch import receiver
from django.db.models.signals import pre_delete

from wagtail.wagtailcore.signals import page_published
from wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.utils import purge_page_from_cache


...


def blog_page_changed(blog_page):
    # Find all the live BlogIndexPages that contain this blog_page
    for blog_index in BlogIndexPage.objects.live():
        if blog_page in blog_index.get_blog_items().object_list:
            # Purge this blog index
            purge_page_from_cache(blog_index)


@receiver(page_published, sender=BlogPage):
def blog_published_handler(instance):
    blog_page_changed(instance)


@receiver(pre_delete, sender=BlogPage)
def blog_deleted_handler(instance):
    blog_page_changed(instance)
Invalidating individual URLs

wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.utils provides another function called purge_url_from_cache. As the name suggests, this purges an individual URL from the cache.

For example, this could be useful for purging a single page of blogs:

from wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache.utils import purge_url_from_cache

# Purge the first page of the blog index
purge_url_from_cache(blog_index.url + '?page=1')
RoutablePageMixin

The RoutablePageMixin mixin provides a convenient way for a page to respond on multiple sub-URLs with different views. For example, a blog section on a site might provide several different types of index page at URLs like /blog/2013/06/, /blog/authors/bob/, /blog/tagged/python/, all served by the same page instance.

A Page using RoutablePageMixin exists within the page tree like any other page, but URL paths underneath it are checked against a list of patterns. If none of the patterns match, control is passed to subpages as usual (or failing that, a 404 error is thrown).

The basics

To use RoutablePageMixin, you need to make your class inherit from both wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models.RoutablePageMixin and wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page, then define some view methods and decorate them with wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models.route.

Here’s an example of an EventPage with three views:

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models import RoutablePageMixin, route


class EventPage(RoutablePageMixin, Page):
    ...

    @route(r'^$')
    def current_events(self, request):
        """
        View function for the current events page
        """
        ...

    @route(r'^past/$')
    def past_events(self, request):
        """
        View function for the past events page
        """
        ...

    # Multiple routes!
    @route(r'^year/(\d+)/$')
    @route(r'^year/current/$')
    def events_for_year(self, request, year=None):
        """
        View function for the events for year page
        """
        ...
Reversing URLs

RoutablePageMixin adds a reverse_subpage() method to your page model which you can use for reversing URLs. For example:

# The URL name defaults to the view method name.
>>> event_page.reverse_subpage('events_for_year', args=(2015, ))
'year/2015/'

This method only returns the part of the URL within the page. To get the full URL, you must append it to the values of either the url or the full_url attribute on your page:

>>> event_page.url + event_page.reverse_subpage('events_for_year', args=(2015, ))
'/events/year/2015/'

>>> event_page.full_url + event_page.reverse_subpage('events_for_year', args=(2015, ))
'http://example.com/events/year/2015/'
Changing route names

The route name defaults to the name of the view. You can override this name with the name keyword argument on @route:

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models import RoutablePageMixin, route


class EventPage(RoutablePageMixin, Page):
    ...

    @route(r'^year/(\d+)/$', name='year')
    def events_for_year(self, request, year):
        """
        View function for the events for year page
        """
        ...

>>> event_page.reverse_subpage('year', args=(2015, ))
'/events/year/2015/'
The RoutablePageMixin class
class wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.models.RoutablePageMixin

This class can be mixed in to a Page model, allowing extra routes to be added to it.

classmethod get_subpage_urls()
resolve_subpage(path)

This method takes a URL path and finds the view to call.

Example:

view, args, kwargs = page.resolve_subpage('/past/')
response = view(request, *args, **kwargs)
reverse_subpage(name, args=None, kwargs=None)

This method takes a route name/arguments and returns a URL path.

Example:

url = page.url + page.reverse_subpage('events_for_year', kwargs={'year': '2014'})
The routablepageurl template tag
wagtail.contrib.wagtailroutablepage.templatetags.wagtailroutablepage_tags.routablepageurl(context, page, url_name, *args, **kwargs)

routablepageurl is similar to pageurl, but works with RoutablePages. It behaves like a hybrid between the built-in reverse, and pageurl from Wagtail.

page is the RoutablePage that URLs will be generated from.

url_name is a URL name defined in page.subpage_urls.

Positional arguments and keyword arguments should be passed as normal positional arguments and keyword arguments.

Example:

{% load wagtailroutablepage_tags %}

{% routablepageurl self "feed" %}
{% routablepageurl self "archive" 2014 08 14 %}
{% routablepageurl self "food" foo="bar" baz="quux" %}
Wagtail API

The wagtailapi module can be used to create a read-only, JSON-based API for public Wagtail content.

There are three endpoints to the API:

  • Pages: /api/v1/pages/
  • Images: /api/v1/images/
  • Documents: /api/v1/documents/

See Wagtail API Installation and Wagtail API Configuration if you’re looking to add this module to your Wagtail site.

See Wagtail API Usage Guide for documentation on the API.

Index
Wagtail API Installation

To install, add wagtail.contrib.wagtailapi to INSTALLED_APPS in your Django settings and configure a URL for it in urls.py

# settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'wagtail.contrib.wagtailapi',
]

# urls.py

from wagtail.contrib.wagtailapi import urls as wagtailapi_urls

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    url(r'^api/', include(wagtailapi_urls)),
]
Wagtail API Configuration
Settings

WAGTAILAPI_BASE_URL (required when using frontend cache invalidation)

This is used in two places, when generating absolute URLs to document files and invalidating the cache.

Generating URLs to documents will fall back the the current request’s hostname if this is not set. Cache invalidation cannot do this, however, so this setting must be set when using this module alongside the wagtailfrontendcache module.

WAGTAILAPI_SEARCH_ENABLED (default: True)

Setting this to false will disable full text search. This applies to all endpoints.

WAGTAILAPI_MAX_RESULTS (default: 20)

This allows you to change the maximum number of results a user can get at any time. This applies to all endpoints.

Adding more fields to the pages endpoint

By default, the pages endpoint only includes the id, title and type fields in both the listing and detail views.

You can add more fields to the pages endpoint by setting an attribute called api_fields to a list or tuple of field names:

class BlogPage(Page):
    posted_by = models.CharField()
    posted_at = models.DateTimeField()
    content = RichTextField()

    api_fields = ('posted_by', 'posted_at', 'content')

This list also supports child relations (which will be nested inside the returned JSON document):

class BlogPageRelatedLink(Orderable):
    page = ParentalKey('BlogPage', related_name='related_links')
    link = models.URLField()

    api_fields = ('link', )

class BlogPage(Page):
    posted_by = models.CharField()
    posted_at = models.DateTimeField()
    content = RichTextField()

    api_fields = ('posted_by', 'posted_at', 'content', 'related_links')
Frontend cache invalidation

If you have a Varnish, Squid or Cloudflare instance in front of your API, the wagtailapi module can automatically invalidate cached responses for you whenever they are updated in the database.

To enable it, firstly configure the wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache module within your project (see [Wagtail frontend cache docs](http://docs.wagtail.io/en/latest/contrib_components/frontendcache.html) for more information).

Then make sure that the WAGTAILAPI_BASE_URL setting is set correctly (Example: WAGTAILAPI_BASE_URL = 'http://api.mysite.com').

Then finally, switch it on by setting WAGTAILAPI_USE_FRONTENDCACHE to True.

Wagtail API Usage Guide
Listing views

Performing a GET request against one of the endpoints will get you a listing of objects in that endpoint. The response will look something like this:

GET /api/v1/endpoint_name/

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": "total number of results"
    },
    "endpoint_name": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "meta": {
                "type": "app_name.ModelName",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/endpoint_name/1/"
            },
            "field": "value"
        },
        {
            "id": 2,
            "meta": {
                "type": "app_name.ModelName",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/endpoint_name/2/"
            },
            "field": "different value"
        }
    ]
}

This is the basic structure of all of the listing views. They all have a meta section with a total_count variable and a listing of things.

Detail views

All of the endpoints also contain a “detail” view which returns information on an individual object. This view is always accessed by appending the id of the object to the URL.

The pages endpoint

This endpoint includes all live pages in your site that have not been put in a private section.

The listing view (/api/v1/pages/)

This is what a typical response from a GET request to this listing would look like:

GET /api/v1/pages/

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 2
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 2,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.HomePage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/2/"
            },
            "title": "Homepage"
        },
        {
            "id": 3,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogIndexPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/3/"
            },
            "title": "Blog"
        }
    ]
}

Each page object contains the id, a meta section and the fields with their values.

meta

This section is used to hold “metadata” fields which aren’t fields in the database. Wagtail API adds two by default:

  • type - The app label/model name of the object
  • detail_url - A URL linking to the detail view for this object
Selecting a page type

Most Wagtail sites are made up of multiple different types of page that each have their own specific fields. In order to view/filter/order on fields specific to one page type, you must select that page type using the type query parameter.

The type query parameter must be set to the Pages model name in the format: app_label.ModelName.

GET /api/v1/pages/?type=demo.BlogPage

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/4/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 1"
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/5/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 2"
        },
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/6/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 3"
        }
    ]
}
Specifying a list of fields to return

As you can see, we still only get the title field, even though we have selected a type. That’s because listing pages require you to explicitly tell it what extra fields you would like to see. You can do this with the fields query parameter.

Just set fields to a command-separated list of field names that you would like to use.

GET /api/v1/pages/?type=demo.BlogPage&fields=title,date_posted,feed_image

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/4/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 1",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-23",
            "feed_image": {
                "id": 1,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/1/"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/5/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 2",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-24",
            "feed_image": {
                "id": 2,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/2/"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/6/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 3",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-25",
            "feed_image": {
                "id": 3,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/3/"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

We now have enough information to make a basic blog listing with a feed image and date that the blog was posted.

Filtering on fields

Exact matches on field values can be done by using a query parameter with the same name as the field. Any pages with the field that exactly matches the value of this parameter will be returned.

GET /api/v1/pages/?type=demo.BlogPage&fields=title,date_posted&date_posted=2015-01-24

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 1
    },
    "pages": [

        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/5/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 2",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-24",
        }
    ]
}
Filtering by section of the tree

It is also possible to filter the listing to only include pages with a particular parent. This is useful if you have multiple blogs on your site and only want to view the contents of one of them.

For example (imagine we are in the same project as all previous examples, and page id 7 refers to the other blog index):

GET /api/v1/pages/?child_of=7

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 1
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/4/"
            },
            "title": "Other blog 1"
        }
    ]
}
Ordering

Like filtering, it is also possible to order on database fields. The endpoint accepts a query parameter called order which should be set to the field name to order by. Field names can be prefixed with a - to reverse the ordering. It is also possible to order randomly by setting this parameter to random.

GET /api/v1/pages/?type=demo.BlogPage&fields=title,date_posted,feed_image&order=-date_posted

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/6/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 3",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-25",
            "feed_image": {
                "id": 3,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/3/"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/5/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 2",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-24",
            "feed_image": {
                "id": 2,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/2/"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/4/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 1",
            "date_posted": "2015-01-23",
            "feed_image": {
                "id": 1,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/1/"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}
Searching

To perform a full-text search, set the search parameter to the query string you would like to search on.

GET /api/v1/pages/?search=Blog

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 3,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogIndexPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/3/"
            },
            "title": "Blog"
        },
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/4/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 1",
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/5/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 2",
        },
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/6/"
            },
            "title": "My blog 3",
        }
    ]
}

The results are ordered by relevance. It is not possible to use the order parameter with a search query.

If your Wagtail site is using Elasticsearch, you do not need to select a type to access specific fields. This will search anything that’s defined in the models’ search_fields.

The detail view (/api/v1/pages/{id}/)

This view gives you access to all of the details for a particular page.

GET /api/v1/pages/6/

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "id": 6,
    "meta": {
        "type": "demo.BlogPage",
        "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/6/"
    },
    "parent": {
        "id": 3,
        "meta": {
            "type": "demo.BlogIndexPage",
            "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/3/"
        }
    },
    "title": "My blog 3",
    "date_posted": "2015-01-25",
    "feed_image": {
        "id": 3,
        "meta": {
            "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
            "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/3/"
        }
    },
    "related_links": [
        {
            "title": "Other blog page",
            "page": {
                "id": 5,
                "meta": {
                    "type": "demo.BlogPage",
                    "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/pages/5/"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}
The format is the same as that which is returned inside the listing view, with two additions:
  • All of the available fields are added to the detail page by default
  • A parent field has been included that contains information about the parent page
The images endpoint

This endpoint gives access to all uploaded images. This will use the custom image model if one was specified. Otherwise, it falls back to wagtailimages.Image.

The listing view (/api/v1/images/)

This is what a typical response from a GET request to this listing would look like:

GET /api/v1/images/

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "images": [
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/4/"
            },
            "title": "Wagtail by Mark Harkin"
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
            },
            "title": "James Joyce"
        },
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/6/"
            },
            "title": "David Mitchell"
        }
    ]
}

Each image object contains the id and title of the image.

Getting width, height and other fields

Like the pages endpoint, the images endpoint supports the fields query parameter.

By default, this will allow you to add the width and height fields to your results. If your Wagtail site uses a custom image model, it is possible to have more.

GET /api/v1/images/?fields=title,width,height

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "images": [
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/4/"
            },
            "title": "Wagtail by Mark Harkin",
            "width": 640,
            "height": 427
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
            },
            "title": "James Joyce",
            "width": 500,
            "height": 392
        },
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/6/"
            },
            "title": "David Mitchell",
            "width": 360,
            "height": 282
        }
    ]
}
Filtering on fields

Exact matches on field values can be done by using a query parameter with the same name as the field. Any images with the field that exactly matches the value of this parameter will be returned.

GET /api/v1/pages/?title=James Joyce

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "images": [
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
            },
            "title": "James Joyce"
        }
    ]
}
Ordering

The images endpoint also accepts the order parameter which should be set to a field name to order by. Field names can be prefixed with a - to reverse the ordering. It is also possible to order randomly by setting this parameter to random.

GET /api/v1/images/?fields=title,width&order=width

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "images": [
        {
            "id": 6,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/6/"
            },
            "title": "David Mitchell",
            "width": 360
        },
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
            },
            "title": "James Joyce",
            "width": 500
        },
        {
            "id": 4,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/4/"
            },
            "title": "Wagtail by Mark Harkin",
            "width": 640
        }
    ]
}
Pagination

Pagination is done using two query parameters called limit and offset. limit sets the number of results to return and offset is the index of the first result to return. The default value for limit is 20 and its maximum value is 100 (which can be changed using the WAGTAILAPI_MAX_RESULTS setting).

GET /api/v1/images/?limit=1&offset=1

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 3
    },
    "images": [
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
            },
            "title": "James Joyce",
            "width": 500,
            "height": 392
        }
    ]
}

Pagination will not change the total_count value in the meta.

Searching

To perform a full-text search, set the search parameter to the query string you would like to search on.

GET /api/v1/images/?search=James

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "meta": {
        "total_count": 1
    },
    "pages": [
        {
            "id": 5,
            "meta": {
                "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
                "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
            },
            "title": "James Joyce",
            "width": 500,
            "height": 392
        }
    ]
}

Like the pages endpoint, the results are ordered by relevance and it is not possible to use the order parameter with a search query.

The detail view (/api/v1/images/{id}/)

This view gives you access to all of the details for a particular image.

GET /api/v1/images/5/

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "id": 5,
    "meta": {
        "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
        "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/5/"
    },
    "title": "James Joyce",
    "width": 500,
    "height": 392
}
The documents endpoint

This endpoint gives access to all uploaded documents.

The listing view (/api/v1/documents/)

The documents listing supports the same features as the images listing (documented above) but works with Documents instead.

The detail view (/api/v1/documents/{id}/)

This view gives you access to all of the details for a particular document.

GET /api/v1/documents/1/

HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "id": 1,
    "meta": {
        "type": "wagtaildocs.Document",
        "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/documents/1/",
        "download_url": "http://api.example.com/documents/1/usage.md"
    },
    "title": "Wagtail API usage"
}
Form builder

Allows forms to be created by admins and provides an interface for browsing form submissions.

Static site generator

Provides a management command that turns a Wagtail site into a set of static HTML files.

Sitemap generator

Provides a view that generates a Google XML sitemap of your public wagtail content.

Frontend cache invalidator

A module for automatically purging pages from a cache (Varnish, Squid or Cloudflare) when their content is changed.

RoutablePageMixin

Provides a way of embedding Django URLconfs into pages.

Wagtail API

A module for adding a read only, JSON based web API to your Wagtail site

Management commands

publish_scheduled_pages

./manage.py publish_scheduled_pages

This command publishes or unpublishes pages that have had these actions scheduled by an editor. It is recommended to run this command once an hour.

fixtree

./manage.py fixtree

This command scans for errors in your database and attempts to fix any issues it finds.

move_pages

manage.py move_pages from to

This command moves a selection of pages from one section of the tree to another.

Options:

  • from This is the id of the page to move pages from. All descendants of this page will be moved to the destination. After the operation is complete, this page will have no children.
  • to This is the id of the page to move pages to.
update_index

./manage.py update_index [--backend <backend name>]

This command rebuilds the search index from scratch. It is only required when using Elasticsearch.

It is recommended to run this command once a week and at the following times:

  • whenever any pages have been created through a script (after an import, for example)
  • whenever any changes have been made to models or search configuration

The search may not return any results while this command is running, so avoid running it at peak times.

Specifying which backend to update

New in version 0.7.

By default, update_index will rebuild all the search indexes listed in WAGTAILSEARCH_BACKENDS.

If you have multiple backends and would only like to update one of them, you can use the --backend option.

For example, to update just the default backend:

python manage.py update_index --backend default
search_garbage_collect

./manage.py search_garbage_collect

Wagtail keeps a log of search queries that are popular on your website. On high traffic websites, this log may get big and you may want to clean out old search queries. This command cleans out all search query logs that are more than one week old.

Hooks

On loading, Wagtail will search for any app with the file wagtail_hooks.py and execute the contents. This provides a way to register your own functions to execute at certain points in Wagtail’s execution, such as when a Page object is saved or when the main menu is constructed.

Registering functions with a Wagtail hook is done through the @hooks.register decorator:

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

@hooks.register('name_of_hook')
def my_hook_function(arg1, arg2...)
    # your code here

Alternatively, hooks.register can be called as an ordinary function, passing in the name of the hook and a handler function defined elsewhere:

hooks.register('name_of_hook', my_hook_function)

The available hooks are:

before_serve_page

Called when Wagtail is about to serve a page. The callable passed into the hook will receive the page object, the request object, and the args and kwargs that will be passed to the page’s serve() method. If the callable returns an HttpResponse, that response will be returned immediately to the user, and Wagtail will not proceed to call serve() on the page.

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

@hooks.register('before_serve_page')
def block_googlebot(page, request, serve_args, serve_kwargs):
    if request.META.get('HTTP_USER_AGENT') == 'GoogleBot':
        return HttpResponse("<h1>bad googlebot no cookie</h1>")

Changed in version 1.0: The hook was renamed from construct_wagtail_edit_bird

construct_wagtail_userbar

Add or remove items from the wagtail userbar. Add, edit, and moderation tools are provided by default. The callable passed into the hook must take the request object and a list of menu objects, items. The menu item objects must have a render method which can take a request object and return the HTML string representing the menu item. See the userbar templates and menu item classes for more information.

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

class UserbarPuppyLinkItem(object):
  def render(self, request):
    return '<li><a href="http://cuteoverload.com/tag/puppehs/" ' \
    + 'target="_parent" class="action icon icon-wagtail">Puppies!</a></li>'

@hooks.register('construct_wagtail_userbar')
def add_puppy_link_item(request, items):
  return items.append( UserbarPuppyLinkItem() )
construct_homepage_panels

Add or remove panels from the Wagtail admin homepage. The callable passed into this hook should take a request object and a list of panels, objects which have a render() method returning a string. The objects also have an order property, an integer used for ordering the panels. The default panels use integers between 100 and 300.

from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

class WelcomePanel(object):
  order = 50

  def render(self):
    return mark_safe("""
    <section class="panel summary nice-padding">
      <h3>No, but seriously -- welcome to the admin homepage.</h3>
    </section>
    """)

@hooks.register('construct_homepage_panels')
def add_another_welcome_panel(request, panels):
  return panels.append( WelcomePanel() )
construct_homepage_summary_items

New in version 1.0.

Add or remove items from the ‘site summary’ bar on the admin homepage (which shows the number of pages and other object that exist on the site). The callable passed into this hook should take a request object and a list of SummaryItem objects to be modified as required. These objects have a render() method, which returns an HTML string, and an order property, which is an integer that specifies the order in which the items will appear.

after_create_page

Do something with a Page object after it has been saved to the database (as a published page or a revision). The callable passed to this hook should take a request object and a page object. The function does not have to return anything, but if an object with a status_code property is returned, Wagtail will use it as a response object. By default, Wagtail will instead redirect to the Explorer page for the new page’s parent.

from django.http import HttpResponse

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

@hooks.register('after_create_page')
def do_after_page_create(request, page):
  return HttpResponse("Congrats on making content!", content_type="text/plain")
after_edit_page
Do something with a Page object after it has been updated. Uses the same behavior as after_create_page.
after_delete_page
Do something after a Page object is deleted. Uses the same behavior as after_create_page.
register_admin_urls

Register additional admin page URLs. The callable fed into this hook should return a list of Django URL patterns which define the structure of the pages and endpoints of your extension to the Wagtail admin. For more about vanilla Django URLconfs and views, see url dispatcher.

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.conf.urls import url

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

def admin_view( request ):
  return HttpResponse( \
    "I have approximate knowledge of many things!", \
    content_type="text/plain")

@hooks.register('register_admin_urls')
def urlconf_time():
  return [
    url(r'^how_did_you_almost_know_my_name/$', admin_view, name='frank' ),
  ]

register_admin_menu_item

Add an item to the Wagtail admin menu. The callable passed to this hook must return an instance of wagtail.wagtailadmin.menu.MenuItem. New items can be constructed from the MenuItem class by passing in a label which will be the text in the menu item, and the URL of the admin page you want the menu item to link to (usually by calling reverse() on the admin view you’ve set up). Additionally, the following keyword arguments are accepted:

name:an internal name used to identify the menu item; defaults to the slugified form of the label. Also applied as a CSS class to the wrapping <li>, as "menu-{name}".
classnames:additional classnames applied to the link, used to give it an icon
attrs:additional HTML attributes to apply to the link
order:an integer which determines the item’s position in the menu

MenuItem can be subclassed to customise the HTML output, specify Javascript files required by the menu item, or conditionally show or hide the item for specific requests (for example, to apply permission checks); see the source code (wagtail/wagtailadmin/menu.py) for details.

from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.menu import MenuItem

@hooks.register('register_admin_menu_item')
def register_frank_menu_item():
  return MenuItem('Frank', reverse('frank'), classnames='icon icon-folder-inverse', order=10000)
register_settings_menu_item

New in version 0.7.

As register_admin_menu_item, but registers menu items into the ‘Settings’ sub-menu rather than the top-level menu.

construct_main_menu

Called just before the Wagtail admin menu is output, to allow the list of menu items to be modified. The callable passed to this hook will receive a request object and a list of menu_items, and should modify menu_items in-place as required. Adding menu items should generally be done through the register_admin_menu_item hook instead - items added through construct_main_menu will be missing any associated Javascript includes, and their is_shown check will not be applied.

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

@hooks.register('construct_main_menu')
def hide_explorer_menu_item_from_frank(request, menu_items):
  if request.user.username == 'frank':
    menu_items[:] = [item for item in menu_items if item.name != 'explorer']
insert_editor_js

Add additional Javascript files or code snippets to the page editor. Output must be compatible with compress, as local static includes or string.

from django.utils.html import format_html, format_html_join
from django.conf import settings

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

@hooks.register('insert_editor_js')
def editor_js():
  js_files = [
    'demo/js/hallo-plugins/hallo-demo-plugin.js',
  ]
  js_includes = format_html_join('\n', '<script src="{0}{1}"></script>',
    ((settings.STATIC_URL, filename) for filename in js_files)
  )
  return js_includes + format_html(
    """
    <script>
      registerHalloPlugin('demoeditor');
    </script>
    """
  )
insert_editor_css

Add additional CSS or SCSS files or snippets to the page editor. Output must be compatible with compress, as local static includes or string.

from django.utils.html import format_html
from django.conf import settings

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

@hooks.register('insert_editor_css')
def editor_css():
  return format_html('<link rel="stylesheet" href="' \
  + settings.STATIC_URL \
  + 'demo/css/vendor/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.min.css">')

construct_whitelister_element_rules

Customise the rules that define which HTML elements are allowed in rich text areas. By default only a limited set of HTML elements and attributes are whitelisted - all others are stripped out. The callables passed into this hook must return a dict, which maps element names to handler functions that will perform some kind of manipulation of the element. These handler functions receive the element as a BeautifulSoup Tag object.

The wagtail.wagtailcore.whitelist module provides a few helper functions to assist in defining these handlers: allow_without_attributes, a handler which preserves the element but strips out all of its attributes, and attribute_rule which accepts a dict specifying how to handle each attribute, and returns a handler function. This dict will map attribute names to either True (indicating that the attribute should be kept), False (indicating that it should be dropped), or a callable (which takes the initial attribute value and returns either a final value for the attribute, or None to drop the attribute).

For example, the following hook function will add the <blockquote> element to the whitelist, and allow the target attribute on <a> elements:

from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks
from wagtail.wagtailcore.whitelist import attribute_rule, check_url, allow_without_attributes

@hooks.register('construct_whitelister_element_rules')
def whitelister_element_rules():
    return {
        'blockquote': allow_without_attributes,
        'a': attribute_rule({'href': check_url, 'target': True}),
    }
register_permissions

New in version 0.7.

Return a queryset of Permission objects to be shown in the Groups administration area.

The project template

mysite/
    core/
        static/
        templates/
            base.html
            404.html
            500.html
    mysite/
        settings/
            base.py
            dev.py
            production.py
    manage.py
    vagrant/
        provision.sh
    Vagrantfile
    readme.rst
    requirements.txt
The “core” app

Location: /mysite/core/

This app is here to help get you started quicker by providing a HomePage model with migrations to create one when you first setup your app.

Default templates and static files

Location: /mysite/core/templates/ and /mysite/core/static/

The templates directory contains base.html, 404.html and 500.html. These files are very commonly needed on Wagtail sites to they have been added into the template.

The static directory contains an empty JavaScript and SASS file. Wagtail uses django-compressor for compiling and compressing static files. For more information, see: Django Compressor Documentation

Vagrant configuration

Location: /Vagrantfile and /vagrant/

If you have Vagrant installed, these files let you easily setup a development environment with PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch inside a virtual machine.

If you do not want to use Vagrant, you can just delete these files.

Django settings

Location: /mysite/mysite/settings/

The Django settings files are split up into base.py, dev.py, production.py and local.py.

base.py
This file is for global settings that will be used in both development and production. Aim to keep most of your configuration in this file.
dev.py
This file is for settings that will only be used by developers. For example: DEBUG = True
production.py
This file is for settings that will only run on a production server. For example: DEBUG = False
local.py

This file is used for settings local to a particular machine. This file should never be tracked by a version control system.

Tip

On production servers, we recommend that you only store secrets in local.py (such as API keys and passwords). This can save you headaches in the future if you are ever trying to debug why a server is behaving badly. If you are using multiple servers which need different settings then we recommend that you create a different production.py file for each one.

Support

Mailing list

If you have general questions about Wagtail, or you’re looking for help on how to do something that these documents don’t cover, join the mailing list at groups.google.com/d/forum/wagtail.

Issues

If you think you’ve found a bug in Wagtail, or you’d like to suggest a new feature, please check the current list at github.com/torchbox/wagtail/issues. If your bug or suggestion isn’t there, raise a new issue, providing as much relevant context as possible.

Torchbox

Finally, if you have a query which isn’t relevant for either of the above forums, feel free to contact the Wagtail team at Torchbox directly, on hello@wagtail.io or @wagtailcms.

Using Wagtail: an Editor’s guide

This section of the documentation is written for the users of a Wagtail-powered site. That is, the content editors, moderators and administrators who will be running things on a day-to-day basis.

Introduction

Wagtail is a new open source content management system (CMS) developed by Torchbox. It is built on the Django framework and designed to be super easy to use for both developers and editors.

This documentation will explain how to:

  • navigate the main user interface of Wagtail
  • create pages of all different types
  • modify, save, publish and unpublish pages
  • how to set up users, and provide them with specific roles to create a publishing workflow
  • upload, edit and include images and documents
  • ... and more!

Getting started

The Wagtail demo site

This examples in this document are based on the Wagtail demo site. However, the instructions are general enough as to be applicable to any Wagtail site. If you want to use the demo site you can find installation and launch instructions on its Github page.

For the purposes of this documentation we will be using the URL, www.example.com, to represent the root (homepage) of your website.

Logging in
  • The first port of call for an editor is the login page for the administrator interface.
  • Access this by adding /admin onto the end of your root URL (e.g. www.example.com/admin).
  • Enter your username and password and click Sign in.
_images/screen01_login.png

Finding your way around

This section describes the different pages that you will see as you navigate around the CMS, and how you can find the content that you are looking for.

The Dashboard

The Dashboard provides information on:

  • The number of pages, images, and documents currently held in the Wagtail CMS
  • Any pages currently awaiting moderation (if you have these privileges)
  • Your most recently edited pages

You can return to the Dashboard at any time by clicking the Wagtail log in the top-left of the screen.

_images/screen02_dashboard_editor.png
  • Clicking the logo returns you to your Dashboard.
  • The stats at the top of the page describe the total amount of content on the CMS (just for fun!).
  • The Pages awaiting moderation table will only displayed if you have moderator or administrator privileges
    • Clicking the name of a page will take you to the ‘Edit page’ interface for this page.
    • Clicking approve or reject will either change the page status to live or return the page to draft status. An email will be sent to the creator of the page giving the result of moderation either way.
    • The Parent column tells you what the parent page of the page awaiting moderation is called. Clicking the parent page name will take you to its Edit page.
  • The Your most recent edits table displays the five pages that you most recently edited.
  • The date column displays the date that you edited the page. Hover your mouse over the date for a more exact time/date.
  • The status column displays the current status of the page. A page will have on one of four statuses:
    • Live: Published and accessible to website visitors
    • Draft: Not live on the website.
    • Live + Draft: A version of the page is live, but a newer version is in draft mode.
The Explorer menu
_images/screen03_explorer_menu.png
  • Click the Explorer button in the sidebar to open the site explorer. This allows you to navigate through the tree-structure of the site.
  • Clicking the name of a page will take you to the Explorer page for that section (see below). NOTE: The site explorer only displays pages which themselves have child pages. To see and edit the child pages you should click the name of the parent page in the site explorer.
  • Clicking the green arrow displays the sub-sections (see below).
  • Clicking the back button takes you back to the parent section.
  • Again, clicking the section title takes you to the Explorer page.
  • Clicking further arrows takes you deeper into the tree.
The Explorer page

The Explorer page allows you to view the a page’s children and perform actions on them. From here you can publish/unpublish pages, move pages to other sections, drill down further into the content tree, or reorder pages under the parent for the purposes of display in menus.

_images/screen05_explorer_page.png
  • The name of the section you are looking at is displayed below the breadcrumb (the row of page names beginning with the home icon). Each section is also itself a page (in this case the homepage). Clicking the title of the section takes you to the Edit screen for the section page.
  • As the heading suggests, below are the child pages of the section. Clicking the titles of each child page will take you to its Edit screen.
_images/screen06_explorer_page_arrow.png
  • Clicking the arrows will display a further level of child pages.
_images/screen07_explorer_page_breadcrumb.png
  • As you drill down through the site the breadcrumb (the row of pages beginning with the home icon) will display the path you have taken. Clicking on the page titles in the breadcrumb will take you to the Explorer screen for that page.
_images/screen08_add_page_button.png
  • To add further child pages press the Add child page button below the parent page title. You can view the parent page on the live site by pressing the View live button. The Move button will take you to the Move page screen where you can reposition the page and all its child pages in the site structure.
  • Similar buttons are available for each child page. These are made visible on hover.
Reordering pages
_images/screen08.5_reorder_page_handles.png
  • Clicking the icon to the far left of the child pages table will enable the reordering handles. This allows you to reorder the way that content displays in the main menu of your website.
  • Reorder by dragging the pages by the handles on the far left (the icon made up of 8 dots).
  • Your new order will be automatically saved each time you drag and drop an item.

Creating new pages

_images/screen08_add_page_button1.png

Create new pages by clicking the Add child page. This creates a child page of the section you are currently in. In this case a child page of the Homepage.

Selecting a page type
_images/screen09_page_type_selection.png
  • On the left of the page chooser screen are listed all the types of pages that you can create. Clicking the page type name will take you to the Create new page screen for that page type (see below).
  • Clicking the View all … pages links on the right will display all the pages that exist on the website of this type. This is to help you judge what type of page you will need to complete your task.
_images/screen10_blank_page_edit_screen.png
  • Once you’ve selected a page type you will be presented with a blank New page screen.
  • Click into the areas below each field’s heading to start entering content.
Creating page body content

Wagtail supports a number of basic fields for creating content, as well as our unique StreamField feature which allows you to construct complex layouts by combining these basic fields in any order.

StreamField

StreamField allows you to create complex layouts of content on a page by combining a number of different arrangements of content, ‘blocks’, in any order.

_images/screen11_empty_streamfield.png

When you first edit a page, you will be presented with the empty StreamField area, with the option to choose one of several block types. The block types on your website may be different from the screenshot here, but the principles are the same.

Click the block type, and the options will disappear, revealing the entry field for that block.

Depending on the block you chose, the field will display differently, and there might even be more than one field! There are a few common field types though that we will talk about here.

  • Basic text field
  • Rich text field
  • Image field
Basic text field

Basic text fields have no formatting options. How these display will be determined by the style of the page in which they are being inserted. Just click into the field and type!

Rich text fields

Most of the time though, you need formatting options to create beautiful looking pages. So some fields, like the fields in the ‘Paragraph block’ shown in the screenshot, have many of the options you would expect from a word processor. These are referred to as rich text fields.

So, when you click into one of these fields, you will be presented with a set of tools which allow you to format and style your text. These tools also allow you to insert links, images, videos clips and links to documents.

_images/screen11.1.5_streamfield_richtext.png

Below is a summary of what the different buttons represent:

_images/screen11.1_bold_italic.png

Bold / Italic: Either click then type for bold or italic, or highlight and select to convert existing text to bold or italic.

_images/screen11.2_formatting_options.png

Paragraph / heading levels: Clicking into a paragraph and selecting one of these options will change the level of the text. H1 is not included as this is reserved for the page title.

_images/screen11.3_lists.png

Bulleted and numbered lists

_images/screen11.4_horizontal_rule.png

Horizontal rule: Creates a horizontal line at the position of the cursor. If inserted inside a paragraph it will split the paragraph into two separate paragraphs.

_images/screen11.5_undo_redo.png

Undo / redo: As expected will undo or redo the latest actions. Never use the your browser’s back button when attempting to undo changes as this could lead to errors. Either use this undo button, or the usual keyboard shortcut, CTRL+Z.

_images/screen11.6_images_videos.png

Insert image / video: Allows you to insert an image or video into the rich text field. See Inserting images and videos section for more details. See Inserting images <inserting_images.html> and Inserting videos <inserting_videos.html> sections.

_images/screen11.7_links_docs.png

Insert link / document: Allows you to insert a link or a document into the rich text field. See Inserting links and Inserting documents for more details. See Inserting links section <inserting_links.html>.

Adding further blocks in StreamField _images/screen11.8_adding_new_blocks.png
  • To add new blocks, click the ‘+’ icons above or below the existing blocks.
  • You’ll then be presented once again with the different blocks from which you may choose.
  • You can cancel the addition of a new block by clicking the cross at the top of the block selection interface.
Reordering and deleting content in StreamField _images/screen11.9_streamfield_reordering.png
  • Click the arrows on the right-hand side of each block to move blocks up and down in the StreamField order of content.
  • The blocks will be displayed in the front-end in the order that they are placed in this interface.
  • Click the rubbish bin on the far right to delete a field

Warning

Once a StreamField field is deleted it cannot be retrieved if the page has not been saved. Save your pages regularly so that if you acidentally delete a field you can reload the page to undo your latest edit.

Inserting images and videos in a page

There will obviously be many instances in which you will want to add images to a page. There are two main ways to add images to pages, either via a specific image chooser field, or via the rich text field image button. Which of these you use will be dependent on the individual setup of your site.

Inserting images using the image chooser field

Often a specific image field will be used for a main image on a page, or for an image to be used when sharing the page on social media. For the standard page on Torchbox.com, the former is used.

_images/screen14_add_main_image.png
  • You insert an image by clicking the Choose an image button.
Choosing an image to insert

You have two options when selecting an image to insert:

  1. Selecting an image from the existing image library, or…
  2. Uploading a new image to the CMS

When you click the Choose an image button you will be presented with a pop-up with two tabs at the top. The first, Search, allows you to search and select from the library. The second, Upload, allows you to upload a new image.

Choosing an image from the image library

The image below demonstrates finding and inserting an image that is already present in the CMS image library.

_images/screen16_selecting_image_from_library.png
  1. Typing into the search box will automatically display the results below.
  2. Clicking one of the Popular tags will filter the search results by that tag.
  3. Clicking an image will take you to the Choose a format window (see image below).

Uploading a new image to the CMS

_images/screen17_upload_image.png
  1. You must include an image title for your uploaded image
  2. Click the Choose file button to choose an image from your computer.
  3. This Tags allows you to associate tags with the image you are uploading. This allows them to be more easily found when searching. Each tag should be separated by a space. Good practice for creating multiple word tags is to use an underscore between each word (e.g. western_yellow_wagtail).
  4. Click Upload to insert the uploaded image into the carousel. The image will also be added to the main CMS image library for reuse in other content.
Inserting images using the rich text field
_images/screen11.6.5_images.png

Images can also be inserted into the body text of a page via the rich text editor. When working in a rich text field, click the image illustrated above. You will then be presented with the same options as for inserting images into the main carousel.

In addition, Wagtail allows you to chose an alignment for you image.

_images/screen18_image_alignment.png
  1. You can select how the image is displayed by selecting one of the format options.
  2. You must provide specific alt text for your image.

The alignments available are described below:

  • Full width: Image will be inserted using the full width of the text area.
  • Half-width left/right aligned: Inserts the image at half the width of the text area. If inserted in a block of text the text will wrap around the image. If two half-width images are inserted together they will display next to each other.

Note

The display of images aligned in this way is dependent on your implementation of Wagtail, so you may get slightly different results.

Inserting links in a page

Similar to images, there are a variety of points at which you will want to add links. The most common place to insert a link will be in the body text of a page. You can insert a link into the body text by clicking the Insert link button in the rich text toolbar.

Whichever way you insert a link, you will be presented with the form displayed below.

_images/screen19_link_form.png
  • Search for an existing page to link to using the search bar at the top of the pop-up.
  • Below the search bar you can select the type of link you want to insert. The following types are available:
    • Internal link: A link to an existing page within the RCA website.
    • External link: A link to a page on another website.
    • Email link: A link that will open the users default email client with the email address prepopulated.
  • You can also navigate through the website to find an internal link via the explorer.
Inserting videos into body content

As well as inserting videos into a carousel, Wagtail’s rich text fields allow you to add videos into the body of a page by clicking the Add video button in the toolbar.

_images/screen20_insert_video_form.png
  • Copy and paste the web address for the video (either YouTube or Vimeo) into the URL field and click Insert.
_images/screen21_video_in_editor.png
  • A placeholder with the name of the video and a screenshot will be inserted into the text area. Clicking the X in the top corner will remove the video.
Inserting links to documents into body text
_images/screen27_docs_icon.png

It is possible to insert links to documents held in the CMS into the body text of a web page by clicking the button above in the rich text field.

The process for doing this is the same as when inserting an image. You are given the choice of either choosing a document from the CMS, or uploading a new document.

_images/screen28_docs_form.png
Adding multiple items

A common feature of Wagtail is the ability to add more than one of a particular type of field or item. For example, you can add as many carousel items or related links as you wish.

_images/screen24_multiple_items_closed.png
  • Whenever you see the white cross in the green circle illustrated here it means you can add multiple objects or items to a page. Clicking the icon will display the fields required for that piece of content. The image below demonstrates this with a Related link item.
_images/screen25_multiple_items_open.png
  • You can delete an individual item by pressing the trash can in the top-right.
  • You can add more items by clicking the link with the white cross again.
_images/screen26_reordering_multiple_items.png
  1. You can reorder your multiple items using the up and down arrows. Doing this will affect the order in which they are display on the live page.
Required fields
  • Fields marked with an asterisk are required. You will not be able to save a draft or submit the page for moderation without these fields being completed.
_images/screen22_required_field.png
  • If you try to save/submit the page with some required fields not filled out, you will see the error displayed here.
  • The number of validation errors for each of the Promote and Content tabs will appear in a red circle, and the text, ‘This field is required’, will appear below each field that must be completed.
_images/screen23_validation_error.png
The Promote tab

A common feature of the Edit pages for all page types is the two tabs at the top of the screen. The first, Content, is where you build the content of the page itself.

The second, Promote, is where you can set all the ‘metadata’ (data about data!) for the page. Below is a description of all default fields in the promote tab and what they do.

  • Slug: The last part of the web address for the page. E.g. the slug for a blog page called ‘The best things on the web’ would be the-best-things-on-the-web (www.example.com/blog/the-best-things-on-the-web). This is automatically generated from the main page title set in the Content tab. This can be overridden by adding a new slug into the field. Slugs should be entirely lowercase, with words separated by hyphens (-).
  • Page title: An optional, search-engine friendly page title. This is the title that appears in the tab of your browser window. It is also the title that would appear in a search engine if the page was returned as part of a set of search results.
  • Show in menus: Ticking this box will ensure that the page is included in automatically generated menus on your site. Note: Pages will only display in menus if all of its parent pages also have Show in menus ticked.
  • Search description: This field allows you to add text that will be displayed if the page appears in search results. This is especially useful to distinguish between similarly named pages.
_images/screen26.5_promote_tab.png

Note

You may see more fields than this in your promote tab. These are just the default fields, but you are free to add other fields to this section as necessary.

Previewing and submitting pages for moderation

The Save/Preview/Submit for moderation menu is always present at the bottom of the page edit/creation screen. The menu allows you to perform the following actions, dependent on whether you are an editor, moderator or administrator:

  • Save draft: Saves your current changes but doesn’t submit the page for moderation and so won’t be published. (all roles)
  • Submit for moderation: Saves your current changes and submits the page for moderation. A moderator will be notified and they will then either publish or reject the page. (all roles)
  • Preview: Opens a new window displaying the page as it would look if published, but does not save your changes or submit the page for moderation. (all roles)
  • Publish/Unpublish: Clicking either the Publish or Unpublish buttons will take you to a confirmation screen asking you to confirm that you wish to publish or unpublish this page. If a page is published it will be accessible from its specific URL and will also be displayed in site search results. (moderators and administrators only)
  • Delete: Clicking this button will take you to a confirmation screen asking you to confirm that you wish to delete the current page. Be sure that this is actually what you want to do, as deleted pages are not recoverable. In many situations simply unpublishing the page will be enough. (moderators and administrators only)
_images/screen13_publish_menu.png

Editing existing pages

There are two ways that you can access the edit screen of an existing page:

  • Clicking the title of the page in an Explorer page or in search results.
  • Clicking the Edit link below the title in either of the situations above.
_images/screen12_edit_screen_overview.png
  • When editing an existing page the title of the page being edited is displayed at the top of the page.
  • The current status of the page is displayed in the top-right.
  • You can change the title of the page by clicking into the title field.
  • When you are typing into a field, help text is often displayed on the right-hand side of the screen.

Managing documents and images

Wagtail allows you to manage all of your documents and images through their own dedicated interfaces. See below for information on each of these elements.

Documents

Documents such as PDFs can be managed from the Documents interface, available in the left-hand menu. This interface allows you to add documents to and remove documents from the CMS.

_images/screen29_documents_page.png
  • Add documents by clicking the Add document button in the top-right.
  • Search for documents in the CMS by entering your search term in the search bar. The results will be automatically updated as you type.
  • You can also filter the results by Popular tags. Click on a tag to update the search results listing.
  • Edit the details of a document by clicking the document title.
_images/screen30_documents_edit_page.png
  • When editing a document you can replace the file associated with that document record. This means you can update documents without having to update the pages on which they are placed. Changing the file will change it on all pages that use the document.
  • Add or remove tags using the Tags field.
  • Save or delete documents using the buttons at the bottom of the interface.

Warning

Deleted documents cannot be recovered.

Images

If you want to edit, add or remove images from the CMS outside of the individual pages you can do so from the Images interface. This is accessed from the left-hand menu.

_images/screen31_images_page.png
  • Clicking an image will allow you to edit the data associated with it. This includes the Alt text, the photographers credit, the medium of the subject matter and much more.

Warning

Changing the alt text here will alter it for all occurrences of the image in carousels, but not in inline images, where the alt text can be set separately.

_images/screen32_image_edit_page.png
Changing the image
  • When editing an image you can replace the file associated with that image record. This means you can update images without having to update the pages on which they are placed.

Warning

Changing the file will change it on all pages that use the image.

Focal point
  • This interface allows you to select a focal point which can effect how your image displays to visitors on the front-end.
  • If your images are cropped in some way to make them fit to a specific shape, then the focal point will define the centre point from which the image is cropped.
  • To set the focal point, simply a marquee around the most important element of the image.
  • If the feature is set up in your website, then on the front-end you will see the crop of this image focusing on your selection.
Snippets

Snippets allow you to create elements on a website once and reuse them in multiple places. Then, if you want to change something on the snippet, you only need to change it once, and it will change across all the occurances of the snippet.

How snippets are used can vary widely between websites. Here are a few examples of things Torchbox have used snippets for on our clients websites:

  • For staff contact details, so that they can be added to many pages but managed in one place
  • For Adverts, either to be applied sitewide or on individual pages
  • To manage links in a global area of the site, for example in the footer
  • For Calls to Action, such as Newsletter signup blocks, that may be consistent across many different pages
The Snippets menu
_images/screen33_snippet_menu.png
  • You can access the Snippets menu by clicking on the ‘Snippets’ link in the left-hand menu bar.
  • To add or edit a snippet, click on the snippet type you are interested in (often help text will be included to help you in selecting the right type)
  • Click on an individual snippet to edit, or click ‘Add ...’ in the top right to add a new snippet

Warning

Editing a snippet will change it on all of the pages on which it has been used. In the top-right of the Snippet edit screen you will see a label saying how many times the snippet has been used. Clicking this label will display a listing of all of these pages.

_images/screen34_snippet_used_times.png
Adding snippets whilst editing a page

If you are editing a page, and you find yourself in need of a new snippet, do not fear! You can create a new one without leaving the page you are editing:

  • Whilst editing the page, open the snippets interface in a new tab, either by Ctrl+click (cmd+click on Mac) or by right clicking it and selecting ‘Open in new tab’ from the resulting menu.
  • Add the snippet in this new tab as you normally would.
  • Return to your existing tab and reopen the Snippet chooser window.
  • You should now see your new snippet, even though you didn’t leave the edit page.

Note

Even though this is possible, it is worth saving your page as a draft as often as possible, to avoid your changes being lost by navigating away from the edit page accidentally.

Contributing to Wagtail

Issues

The easiest way to contribute to Wagtail is to tell us how to improve it! First, check to see if your bug or feature request has already been submitted at github.com/torchbox/wagtail/issues. If it has, and you have some supporting information which may help us deal with it, comment on the existing issue. If not, please create a new one, providing as much relevant context as possible. For example, if you’re experiencing problems with installation, detail your environment and the steps you’ve already taken. If something isn’t displaying correctly, tell us what browser you’re using, and include a screenshot if possible.

Pull requests

If you’re a Python or Django developer, fork and get stuck in! Send us a useful pull request and we’ll post you a t-shirt. We welcome all contributions, whether they solve problems which are specific to you or they address existing issues. If you’re stuck for ideas, pick something from the issue list, or email us directly on hello@wagtail.io if you’d like us to suggest something!

Translations

Wagtail has internationalisation support so if you are fluent in a non-English language you can contribute by localising the interface.

Translation work should be submitted through Transifex.

Other contributions

We welcome contributions to all aspects of Wagtail. If you would like to improve the design of the user interface, or extend the documentation, please submit a pull request as above. If you’re not familiar with Github or pull requests, contact us directly and we’ll work something out.

Development
Using the demo site & Vagrant

We recommend using the Wagtail demo site which uses Vagrant, as a basis for developing Wagtail itself.

Install the wagtaildemo following the instructions in the wagtaildemo README, then continue with the instructions below.

Clone a copy of the Wagtail codebase alongside your demo site at the same level. So in the directory containing wagtaildemo, run:

git clone https://github.com/torchbox/wagtail.git

Enable the Vagrantfile included with the demo - this ensures you can edit the Wagtail codebase from outside Vagrant:

cd wagtaildemo
cp Vagrantfile.local.example Vagrantfile.local

If you clone Wagtail’s codebase to somewhere other than one level above, edit Vagrantfile.local to specify the alternate path.

Lastly, we tell Django to use your freshly cloned Wagtail codebase as the source of Wagtail CMS, not the pip-installed version that came with wagtaildemo:

cp wagtaildemo/settings/local.py.example wagtaildemo/settings/local.py

Uncomment the lines from import sys onward, and edit the rest of local.py as appropriate.

If your VM is currently running, you’ll then need to run vagrant halt followed by vagrant up for the changes to take effect.

Development dependencies

Developing Wagtail requires additional Python modules for testing and documentation.

The list of dependencies is in the Wagtail root directory in requirements-dev.txt and if you’ve used the Vagrant environment above, can be installed thus, from the Wagtail codebase root directory:

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
Testing

Wagtail has unit tests which should be run before submitting pull requests.

Testing virtual environment (skip this if working in Vagrant box)

If you are using Python 3.3 or above, run the following commands in your shell at the root of the Wagtail repo:

pyvenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
python setup.py develop
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

For Python 2, you will need to install the virtualenv package and replace the first line above with:

virtualenv venv

Running the tests

From the root of the Wagtail codebase, run the following command to run all the tests:

python runtests.py

Running only some of the tests

At the time of writing, Wagtail has nearly 1000 tests which takes a while to run. You can run tests for only one part of Wagtail by passing in the path as an argument to runtests.py:

python runtests.py wagtail.wagtailcore

Testing against PostgreSQL

By default, Wagtail tests against SQLite. If you need to test against a different database, set the DATABASE_ENGINE environment variable to the name of the Django database backend to test against:

DATABASE_ENGINE=django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2 python runtests.py

This will create a new database called test_wagtail in PostgreSQL and run the tests against it.

If you need to use a different user, password or host. Use the PGUSER, PGPASSWORD and PGHOST environment variables.

Testing Elasticsearch

To test Elasticsearch, you need to have the elasticsearch package installed.

Once installed, Wagtail will attempt to connect to a local instance of Elasticsearch (http://localhost:9200) and use the index test_wagtail.

If your Elasticsearch instance is located somewhere else, you can set the ELASTICSEARCH_URL environment variable to point to its location:

ELASTICSEARCH_URL=http://my-elasticsearch-instance:9200 python runtests.py

If you no longer want Wagtail to test against Elasticsearch, uninstall the elasticsearch package.

Compiling static assets

All static assets such as JavaScript, CSS, images, and fonts for the Wagtail admin are compiled from their respective sources by gulp. The compiled assets are not committed to the repository, and are compiled before packaging each new release. Compiled assets should not be submitted as part of a pull request.

To compile the assets, Node.js and the compilation tool chain need to be installed. Instructions for installing Node.js can be found on the Node.js download page. Once Node.js is installed, installing the tool chain is done via npm:

$ cd /path/to/wagtail
$ npm install

To compile the assets, run:

$ npm run build

This must be done after every change to the source files. To watch the source files for changes and then automatically recompile the assets, run:

$ npm start
UI Styleguide

Developers working on the Wagtail UI or creating new UI components may wish to test their work against our Styleguide, which is provided as the contrib module “wagtailstyleguide”.

To install the styleguide module on your site, add it to the list of INSTALLED_APPS in your settings:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
   ...
   'wagtail.contrib.wagtailstyleguide',
   ...
)

At present the styleguide is static: new UI components must be added to it manually, and there are no hooks into it for other modules to use. We hope to support hooks in the future.

The styleguide doesn’t currently provide examples of all the core interface components; notably the Page, Document, Image and Snippet chooser interfaces are not currently represented.

Python coding guidelines
PEP8

We ask that all Python contributions adhere to the PEP8 style guide, apart from the restriction on line length (E501). The pep8 tool makes it easy to check your code, e.g. pep8 --ignore=E501 your_file.py.

Python 2 and 3 compatibility

All contributions should support Python 2 and 3 and we recommend using the six compatibility library (use the pip version installed as a dependency, not the version bundled with Django).

Tests

Wagtail has a suite of tests, which we are committed to improving and expanding. See Testing.

We run continuous integration at travis-ci.org/torchbox/wagtail to ensure that no commits or pull requests introduce test failures. If your contributions add functionality to Wagtail, please include the additional tests to cover it; if your contributions alter existing functionality, please update the relevant tests accordingly.

CSS coding guidelines

Our CSS is written in Sass, using the SCSS syntax.

Compiling

The SCSS source files are compiled to CSS using the [gulp](http://gulpjs.com/) build system. This requires [node.js](http://nodejs.org) to run. To install the libraries required for compiling the SCSS, run the following from the Wagtail repository root:

$ npm install

To compile the assets, run:

$ npm run build

Alternatively, the SCSS files can be monitored, automatically recompiling when any changes are observed, by running:

$ npm start
Spacing
  • Use soft-tabs with a four space indent. Spaces are the only way to guarantee code renders the same in any person’s environment.
  • Put spaces after : in property declarations.
  • Put spaces before { in rule declarations.
  • Put line breaks between rulesets.
  • When grouping selectors, keep individual selectors to a single line.
  • Place closing braces of declaration blocks on a new line.
  • Each declaration should appear on its own line for more accurate error reporting.
  • Add a newline at the end of your .scss files.
  • Strip trailing whitespace from your rules.
Formatting
  • Use hex color codes #000 unless using rgba() in raw CSS (SCSS’ rgba() function is overloaded to accept hex colors as a param, e.g., rgba(#000, .5)).
  • Use // for comment blocks (instead of /* */).
  • Use single quotes for string values background: url('my/image.png') or content: 'moose'
  • Avoid specifying units for zero values, e.g., margin: 0; instead of margin: 0px;.
  • Strive to limit use of shorthand declarations to instances where you must explicitly set all the available values.
Sass imports

Leave off underscores and file extensions in includes:

// Bad
@import 'components/_widget.scss'

// Better
@import 'components/widget'
Pixels vs. ems

Use rems for font-size, because they offer absolute control over text. Additionally, unit-less line-height is preferred because it does not inherit a percentage value of its parent element, but instead is based on a multiplier of the font-size.

Specificity (classes vs. ids)

Always use classes instead of IDs in CSS code. IDs are overly specific and lead to duplication of CSS.

When styling a component, start with an element + class namespace, prefer direct descendant selectors by default, and use as little specificity as possible. Here is a good example:

<ul class="category-list">
    <li class="item">Category 1</li>
    <li class="item">Category 2</li>
    <li class="item">Category 3</li>
</ul>

.category-list { // element + class namespace

    // Direct descendant selector > for list items
    > li {
        list-style-type: disc;
    }

    // Minimal specificity for all links
    a {
        color: #f00;
    }
}
Class naming conventions

Never reference js- prefixed class names from CSS files. js- are used exclusively from JS files.

Use the SMACSS is- prefix for state rules that are shared between CSS and JS.

Misc

As a rule of thumb, avoid unnecessary nesting in SCSS. At most, aim for three levels. If you cannot help it, step back and rethink your overall strategy (either the specificity needed, or the layout of the nesting).

Examples

Here are some good examples that apply the above guidelines:

// Example of good basic formatting practices
.styleguide-format {
    color: #000;
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, .5);
    border: 1px solid #0f0;
}

// Example of individual selectors getting their own lines (for error reporting)
.multiple,
.classes,
.get-new-lines {
    display: block;
}

// Avoid unnecessary shorthand declarations
.not-so-good {
    margin: 0 0 20px;
}
.good {
    margin-bottom: 20px;
}
Vendor prefixes

Line up your vendor prefixes.

// Example of good prefix formatting practices
.styleguide-format {
    -webkit-transition: opacity 0.2s ease-out;
       -moz-transition: opacity 0.2s ease-out;
        -ms-transition: opacity 0.2s ease-out;
         -o-transition: opacity 0.2s ease-out;
            transition: opacity 0.2s ease-out;
}

Don’t write vendor prefixes for border-radius, it’s pretty well supported.

If you’re unsure, you can always check support at caniuse

Linting SCSS

The guidelines are included in a .scss-lint.yml file so that you can check that your code conforms to the style guide.

Run the linter with scss-lint . from the wagtail project root. You’ll need to have the linter installed to do this. You can get it by running:

gem install scss-lint
JavaScript coding guidelines

Write JavaScript according to the Airbnb Styleguide, with some exceptions:

  • Use soft-tabs with a four space indent. Spaces are the only way to guarantee code renders the same in any person’s environment.
  • We accept snake_case in object properties, such as ajaxResponse.page_title, however camelCase or UPPER_CASE should be used everywhere else.
Linting and formatting code

Wagtail provides some tooling configuration to help check your code meets the styleguide. You’ll need node.js and npm on your development machine. Ensure project dependencies are installed by running npm install

Linting code

npm run lint:js

This will lint all the JS in the wagtail project, excluding vendor files and compiled libraries.

Some of the modals are generated via server-side scripts. These include template tags that upset the linter, so modal workflow JavaScript is excluded from the linter.

Formatting code

npm run format:js

This will perform safe edits to conform your JS code to the styleguide. It won’t touch the line-length, or convert quotemarks from double to single.

Run the linter after you’ve formatted the code to see what manual fixes you need to make to the codebase.

Changing the linter configuration

Under the hood, the tasks use the JavaScript Code Style library.

To edit the settings for ignored files, or to change the linting rules, edit the .jscsrc file in the wagtail project root.

A complete list of the possible linting rules can be found here: JSCS Rules

Release notes

Wagtail 1.0 release notes

What’s changed
StreamField - a field type for freeform content

StreamField provides an editing model for freeform content such as blog posts and news stories, allowing diverse content types such as text, images, headings, video and more specialised types such as maps and charts to be mixed in any order. See Freeform page content using StreamField.

Wagtail API - A RESTful API for your Wagtail site

When installed, the new Wagtail API module provides a RESTful web API to your Wagtail site. You can use this for accessing your raw field content for your sites pages, images and documents in JSON format. See Wagtail API

MySQL support

Wagtail now officially supports MySQL as a database backend.

Django 1.8 support

Wagtail now officially supports running under Django 1.8.

Vanilla project template

The built-in project template is more like the Django built-in one with several Wagtail-specific additions. It includes bare minimum settings and two apps (home and search).

Minor changes
  • Dropped Django 1.6 support
  • Dropped Python 2.6 and 3.2 support
  • Dropped Elasticsearch 0.90.x support
  • Removed dependency on libsass
  • Users without usernames can now be created and edited in the admin interface
  • Added new translations for Croatian and Finnish
Core
  • The Page model now records the date/time that a page was first published, as the field first_published_at
  • Increased the maximum length of a page slug from 50 to 255 characters
  • Added hooks register_rich_text_embed_handler and register_rich_text_link_handler for customising link / embed handling within rich text fields
  • Page URL paths can now be longer than 255 characters
Admin

UI

  • Improvements to the layout of the left-hand menu footer
  • Menu items of custom apps are now highlighted when being used
  • Added thousands separator for counters on dashboard
  • Added contextual links to admin notification messages
  • When copying pages, it is now possible to specify a place to copy to
  • Added pagination to the snippets listing and chooser
  • Page / document / image / snippet choosers now include a link to edit the chosen item
  • Plain text fields in the page editor now use auto-expanding text areas
  • Added “Add child page” button to admin userbar
  • Added update notifications (See: Wagtail update notifications)

Page editor

  • JavaScript includes in the admin backend have been moved to the HTML header, to accommodate form widgets that render inline scripts that depend on libraries such as jQuery
  • The external link chooser in rich text areas now accepts URLs of the form ‘/some/local/path’, to allow linking to non-Wagtail-controlled URLs within the local site
  • Bare text entered in rich text areas is now automatically wrapped in a paragraph element

Edit handlers API

  • FieldPanel now accepts an optional widget parameter to override the field’s default form widget
  • Page model fields without a FieldPanel are no longer displayed in the form
  • No longer need to specify the base model on InlinePanel definitions
  • Page classes can specify an edit_handler property to override the default Content / Promote / Settings tabbed interface. See Customising the tabbed interface.

Other admin changes

  • SCSS files in wagtailadmin now use absolute imports, to permit overriding by user stylesheets
  • Removed the dependency on LOGIN_URL and LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL settings
  • Password reset view names namespaced to wagtailadmin
  • Removed the need to add permission check on admin views (now automated)
  • Reversing django.contrib.auth.admin.login will no longer lead to Wagtails login view (making it easier to have frontend login views)
  • Added cache-control headers to all admin views. This allows Varnish/Squid/CDN to run on vanilla settings in front of a Wagtail site
  • Date / time pickers now consistently use times without seconds, to prevent JavasSript behaviour glitches when focusing / unfocusing fields
  • Added hook construct_homepage_summary_items for customising the site summary panel on the admin homepage
  • Renamed the construct_wagtail_edit_bird hook to construct_wagtail_userbar
  • ‘static’ template tags are now used throughout the admin templates, in place of STATIC_URL
Docs
  • Support for django-sendfile added
  • Documents now served with correct mime-type
  • Support for If-Modified-Since HTTP header
Routable pages
  • Added a new decorator-based syntax for RoutablePage, compatible with Django 1.8
Bug fixes
  • The document_served signal now correctly passes the Document class as sender and the document as instance
  • Image edit page no longer throws OSError when the original image is missing
  • Collapsible blocks stay open on any form error
  • Document upload modal no longer switches tabs on form errors
  • with_metaclass is now imported from Django’s bundled copy of the six library, to avoid errors on Mac OS X from an outdated system copy of the library being imported
Upgrade considerations
Support for older Django/Python/Elasticsearch versions dropped

This release drops support for Django 1.6, Python 2.6/3.2 and Elasticsearch 0.90.x. Please make sure these are updated before upgrading.

If you are upgrading from Elasticsearch 0.90.x, you may also need to update the elasticsearch pip package to a version greater than 1.0 as well.

Wagtail version upgrade notifications are enabled by default

Starting from Wagtail 1.0, the admin dashboard will (for admin users only) perform a check to see if newer releases are available. This also provides the Wagtail team with the hostname of your Wagtail site. If you’d rather not receive update notifications, or if you’d like your site to remain unknown, you can disable it by adding this line to your settings file:

WAGTAIL_ENABLE_UPDATE_CHECK = False
InlinePanel definitions no longer need to specify the base model

In previous versions of Wagtail, inline child blocks on a page or snippet were defined using a declaration like:

InlinePanel(HomePage, 'carousel_items', label="Carousel items")

It is no longer necessary to pass the base model as a parameter, so this declaration should be changed to:

InlinePanel('carousel_items', label="Carousel items")

The old format is now deprecated; all existing InlinePanel declarations should be updated to the new format.

Custom image models should now set the admin_form_fields attribute

Django 1.8 now requires that all the fields in a ModelForm must be defined in its Meta.fields attribute.

As Wagtail uses Django’s ModelForm for creating image model forms, we’ve added a new attribute called admin_form_fields that should be set to a tuple of field names on the image model.

See Custom image model for an example.

You no longer need LOGIN_URL and LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL to point to Wagtail admin.

If you are upgrading from an older version of Wagtail, you probably want to remove these from your project settings.

Prevously, these two settings needed to be set to wagtailadmin_login and wagtailadmin_dashboard respectively or Wagtail would become very tricky to log in to. This is no longer the case and Wagtail should work fine without them.

RoutablePage now uses decorator syntax for defining views

In previous versions of Wagtail, page types that used the RoutablePageMixin had endpoints configured by setting their subpage_urls attribute to a list of urls with view names. This will not work on Django 1.8 as view names can no longer be passed into a url (see: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/releases/1.8/#django-conf-urls-patterns).

Wagtail 1.0 introduces a new syntax where each view function is annotated with a @route decorator - see RoutablePageMixin.

The old subpage_urls convention will continue to work on Django versions prior to 1.8, but this is now deprecated; all existing RoutablePage definitions should be updated to the decorator-based convention.

Upgrading from the external wagtailapi module.

If you were previously using the external wagtailapi module (which has now become wagtail.contrib.wagtailapi). Please be aware of the following backwards-incompatible changes:

1. Representation of foreign keys has changed

Foreign keys were previously represented by just the value of their primary key. For example:

"feed_image": 1

This has now been changed to add some meta information:

"feed_image": {
    "id": 1,
    "meta": {
        "type": "wagtailimages.Image",
        "detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v1/images/1/"
    }
}

2. On the page detail view, the “parent” field has been moved out of meta

Previously, there was a “parent” field in the “meta” section on the page detail view:

{
    "id": 10,
    "meta": {
         "type": "demo.BlogPage",
         "parent": 2
    },

    ...
}

This has now been moved to the top level. Also, the above change to how foreign keys are represented applies to this field too:

{
    "id": 10,
    "meta": {
         "type": "demo.BlogPage"
    },
    "parent": {
         "id": 2,
         "meta": {
             "type": "demo.BlogIndexPage"
         }
    }

    ...
}
Celery no longer automatically used for sending notification emails

Previously, Wagtail would try to use Celery whenever the djcelery module was installed, even if Celery wasn’t actually set up. This could cause a very hard to track down problem where notification emails would not be sent so this functionality has now been removed.

If you would like to keep using Celery for sending notification emails, have a look at: django-celery-email

Login/Password reset views renamed

It was previously possible to reverse the Wagtail login view using django.contrib.auth.views.login. This is no longer possible. Update any references to wagtailadmin_login.

Password reset view name has changed from password_reset to wagtailadmin_password_reset.

JavaScript includes in admin backend have been moved

To improve compatibility with third-party form widgets, pages within the Wagtail admin backend now output their JavaScript includes in the HTML header, rather than at the end of the page. If your project extends the admin backend (through the register_admin_menu_item hook, for example) you will need to ensure that all associated JavaScript code runs correctly from the new location. In particular, any code that accesses HTML elements will need to be contained in an ‘onload’ handler (e.g. jQuery’s $(document).ready()).

EditHandler internal API has changed

While it is not an official Wagtail API, it has been possible for Wagtail site implementers to define their own EditHandler subclasses for use in panel definitions, to customise the behaviour of the page / snippet editing forms. If you have made use of this facility, you will need to update your custom EditHandlers, as this mechanism has been refactored (to allow EditHandler classes to keep a persistent reference to their corresponding model). If you have only used Wagtail’s built-in panel types (FieldPanel, InlinePanel, PageChooserPanel and so on), you are unaffected by this change.

Previously, functions like FieldPanel acted as ‘factory’ functions, where a call such as FieldPanel('title') constructed and returned an EditHandler subclass tailored to work on a ‘title’ field. These functions now return an object with a bind_to_model method instead; the EditHandler subclass can be obtained by calling this with the model class as a parameter. As a guide to updating your custom EditHandler code, you may wish to refer to the relevant change to the Wagtail codebase.

chooser_panel templates are obsolete

If you have added your own custom admin views to the Wagtail admin (e.g. through the register_admin_urls hook), you may have used one of the following template includes to incorporate a chooser element for pages, documents, images or snippets into your forms:

  • wagtailadmin/edit_handlers/chooser_panel.html
  • wagtailadmin/edit_handlers/page_chooser_panel.html
  • wagtaildocs/edit_handlers/document_chooser_panel.html
  • wagtailimages/edit_handlers/image_chooser_panel.html
  • wagtailsnippets/edit_handlers/snippet_chooser_panel.html

All of these templates are now deprecated. Wagtail now provides a set of Django form widgets for this purpose - AdminPageChooser, AdminDocumentChooser, AdminImageChooser and AdminSnippetChooser - which can be used in place of the HiddenInput widget that these form fields were previously using. The field can then be rendered using the regular wagtailadmin/shared/field.html or wagtailadmin/shared/field_as_li.html template.

document_served signal arguments have changed

Previously, the document_served signal (which is fired whenever a user downloads a document) passed the document instance as the sender. This has now been changed to correspond the behaviour of Django’s built-in signals; sender is now the Document class, and the document instance is passed as the argument instance. Any existing signal listeners that expect to receive the document instance in sender must now be updated to check the instance argument instead.

Custom image models must specify an admin_form_fields list

Previously, the forms for creating and editing images followed Django’s default behaviour of showing all fields defined on the model; this would include any custom fields specific to your project that you defined by subclassing AbstractImage and setting WAGTAILIMAGES_IMAGE_MODEL. This behaviour is risky as it may lead to fields being unintentionally exposed to the user, and so Django has deprecated this, for removal in Django 1.8. Accordingly, if you create your own custom subclass of AbstractImage, you must now provide an admin_form_fields property, listing the fields that should appear on the image creation / editing form - for example:

from wagtail.wagtailimages.models import AbstractImage, Image

class MyImage(AbstractImage):
    photographer = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    has_legal_approval = models.BooleanField()

    admin_form_fields = Image.admin_form_fields + ['photographer']
construct_wagtail_edit_bird hook has been renamed

Previously you could customize the Wagtail userbar using the construct_wagtail_edit_bird hook. The hook has been renamed to construct_wagtail_userbar.

The old hook is now deprecated; all existing construct_wagtail_edit_bird declarations should be updated to the new hook.

IMAGE_COMPRESSION_QUALITY setting has been renamed

The IMAGE_COMPRESSION_QUALITY setting, which determines the quality of saved JPEG images as a value from 1 to 100, has been renamed to WAGTAILIMAGES_JPEG_QUALITY. If you have used this setting, please update your settings file accordingly.

Wagtail 0.8.8 release notes

What’s changed
Bug fixes
  • Form builder no longer raises a TypeError when submitting unchecked boolean field
  • Image upload form no longer breaks when using i10n thousand separators
  • Multiple image uploader now escapes HTML in filenames
  • Retrieving an individual item from a sliced BaseSearchResults object now properly takes the slice offset into account
  • Removed dependency on unicodecsv which fixes a crash on Python 3
  • Submitting unicode text in form builder form no longer crashes with UnicodeEncodeError on Python 2
  • Creating a proxy model from a Page class no longer crashes in the system check
  • Unrecognised embed URLs passed to the |embed filter no longer cause the whole page to crash with an EmbedNotFoundException
  • Underscores no longer get stripped from page slugs

Wagtail 0.8.7 release notes

What’s changed
Bug fixes
  • wagtailfrontendcache no longer tries to purge pages that are not in a site
  • The contents of <div> elements in the rich text editor were not being whitelisted
  • Due to the above issue, embeds/images in a rich text field would sometimes be saved into the database in their editor representation
  • RoutablePage now prevents subpage_urls from being defined as a property, which would cause a memory leak
  • Added validation to prevent pages being created with only whitespace characters in their title fields
  • Users are no longer logged out on changing password when SessionAuthenticationMiddleware (added in Django 1.7) is in use
  • Added a workaround for a Python / Django issue that prevented documents with certain non-ASCII filenames from being served

Wagtail 0.8.6 release notes

What’s new
Minor features
  • Translations updated, including new translations for Czech, Italian and Japanese
  • The “fixtree” command can now delete orphaned pages
Bug fixes
  • django-taggit library updated to 0.12.3, to fix a bug with migrations on SQLite on Django 1.7.2 and above (https://github.com/alex/django-taggit/issues/285)
  • Fixed a bug that caused children of a deleted page to not be deleted if they had a different type
Upgrade considerations
Orphaned pages may need deleting

This release fixes a bug with page deletion introduced in 0.8, where deleting a page with child pages will result in those child pages being left behind in the database (unless the child pages are of the same type as the parent). This may cause errors later on when creating new pages in the same position. To identify and delete these orphaned pages, it is recommended that you run the following command (from the project root) after upgrading to 0.8.6:

./manage.py fixtree

This will output a list of any orphaned pages found, and request confirmation before deleting them.

Since this now makes fixtree an interactive command, a ./manage.py fixtree --noinput option has been added to restore the previous non-interactive behaviour. With this option enabled, deleting orphaned pages is always skipped.

Wagtail 0.8.5 release notes

What’s new
Bug fixes
  • On adding a new page, the available page types are ordered by the displayed verbose name
  • Active admin submenus were not properly closed when activating another
  • get_sitemap_urls is now called on the specific page class so it can now be overridden
  • (Firefox and IE) Fixed preview window hanging and not refocusing when “Preview” button is clicked again
  • Storage backends that return raw ContentFile objects are now handled correctly when resizing images
  • Punctuation characters are no longer stripped when performing search queries
  • When adding tags where there were none before, it is now possible to save a single tag with multiple words in it
  • richtext template tag no longer raises TypeError if None is passed into it
  • Serving documents now uses a streaming HTTP response and will no longer break Django’s cache middleware
  • User admin area no longer fails in the presence of negative user IDs (as used by django-guardian‘s default settings)
  • Password reset emails now use the BASE_URL setting for the reset URL
  • BASE_URL is now included in the project template’s default settings file

Wagtail 0.8.4 release notes

What’s new
Bug fixes
  • It is no longer possible to have the explorer and settings menu open at the same time
  • Page IDs in page revisions were not updated on page copy, causing subsequent edits to be committed to the original page instead
  • Copying a page now creates a new page revision, ensuring that changes to the title/slug are correctly reflected in the editor (and also ensuring that the user performing the copy is logged)
  • Prevent a race condition when creating Filter objects
  • On adding a new page, the available page types are ordered by the displayed verbose name

Wagtail 0.8.3 release notes

What’s new
Bug fixes
  • Added missing jQuery UI sprite files, causing collectstatic to throw errors (most reported on Heroku)
  • Page system check for on_delete actions of ForeignKeys was throwing false positives when page class decends from an abstract class (Alejandro Giacometti)
  • Page system check for on_delete actions of ForeignKeys now only raises warnings, not errors
  • Fixed a regression where form builder submissions containing a number field would fail with a JSON serialisation error
  • Resizing an image with a focal point equal to the image size would result in a divide-by-zero error
  • Focal point indicator would sometimes be positioned incorrectly for small or thin images
  • Fix: Focal point chooser background colour changed to grey to make working with transparent images easier
  • Elasticsearch configuration now supports specifying HTTP authentication parameters as part of the URL, and defaults to ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) if port number not specified
  • Fixed a TypeError when previewing pages that use RoutablePageMixin
  • Rendering image with missing file in rich text no longer crashes the entire page
  • IOErrors thrown by underlying image libraries that are not reporting a missing image file are no longer caught
  • Fix: Minimum Pillow version bumped to 2.6.1 to work around a crash when using images with transparency
  • Fix: Images with transparency are now handled better when being used in feature detection
Upgrade considerations
Port number must be specified when running Elasticsearch on port 9200

In previous versions, an Elasticsearch connection URL in WAGTAILSEARCH_BACKENDS without an explicit port number (e.g. http://localhost/) would be treated as port 9200 (the Elasticsearch default) whereas the correct behaviour would be to use the default http/https port of 80/443. This behaviour has now been fixed, so sites running Elasticsearch on port 9200 must now specify this explicitly - e.g. http://localhost:9200. (Projects using the default settings, or the settings given in the Wagtail documentation, are unaffected.)

Wagtail 0.8.1 release notes

What’s new
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a regression where images would fail to save when feature detection is active

Wagtail 0.8 release notes

What’s new
Minor features
  • Page operations (creation, publishing, copying etc) are now logged via Python’s logging framework; to configure this, add a logger entry for 'wagtail' or 'wagtail.core' to the LOGGING setup in your settings file.
  • The save button on the page edit page now redirects the user back to the edit page instead of the explorer
  • Signal handlers for wagtail.wagtailsearch and wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache are now automatically registered when using Django 1.7 or above.
  • Added a Django 1.7 system check to ensure that foreign keys from Page models are set to on_delete=SET_NULL, to prevent inadvertent (and tree-breaking) page deletions
  • Improved error reporting on image upload, including ability to set a maximum file size via a new setting WAGTAILIMAGES_MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE
  • The external image URL generator now keeps persistent image renditions, rather than regenerating them on each request, so it no longer requires a front-end cache.
  • Added Dutch translation
Bug fixes
  • Replaced references of .username with .get_username() on users for better custom user model support
  • Unpinned dependency versions for six and requests to help prevent dependency conflicts
  • Fixed TypeError when getting embed HTML with oembed on Python 3
  • Made HTML whitelisting in rich text fields more robust at catching disallowed URL schemes such as jav\tascript:
  • created_at timestamps on page revisions were not being preserved on page copy, causing revisions to get out of sequence
  • When copying pages recursively, revisions of sub-pages were being copied regardless of the copy_revisions flag
  • Updated the migration dependencies within the project template to ensure that Wagtail’s own migrations consistently apply first
  • The cache of site root paths is now cleared when a site is deleted
  • Search indexing now prevents pages from being indexed multiple times, as both the base Page model and the specific subclass
  • Search indexing now avoids trying to index abstract models
  • Fixed references to “username” in login form help text for better custom user model support
  • Later items in a model’s search_field list now consistently override earlier items, allowing subclasses to redefine rules from the parent
  • Image uploader now accepts JPEG images that PIL reports as being in MPO format
  • Multiple checkbox fields on form-builder forms did not correctly save multiple values
  • Editing a page’s slug and saving it without publishing could sometimes cause the URL paths of child pages to be corrupted
  • latest_revision_created_at was being cleared on page publish, causing the page to drop to the bottom of explorer listings
  • Searches on partial_match fields were wrongly applying prefix analysis to the search query as well as the document (causing e.g. a query for “water” to match against “wagtail”)
Upgrade considerations
Corrupted URL paths may need fixing

This release fixes a bug in Wagtail 0.7 where editing a parent page’s slug could cause the URL paths of child pages to become corrupted. To ensure that your database does not contain any corrupted URL paths, it is recommended that you run ./manage.py set_url_paths after upgrading.

Automatic registration of signal handlers (Django 1.7+)

Signal handlers for the wagtailsearch core app and wagtailfrontendcache contrib app are automatically registered when using Django 1.7. Calls to register_signal_handlers from your urls.py can be removed.

Change to search API when using database backend

When using the database backend, calling search (either through Page.objects.search() or on the backend directly) will now return a SearchResults object rather than a Django QuerySet to make the database backend work more like the Elasticsearch backend.

This change shouldn’t affect most people as SearchResults behaves very similarly to QuerySet. But it may cause issues if you are calling QuerySet specific methods after calling .search(). Eg: Page.objects.search("Hello").filter(foo="Bar") (in this case, .filter() should be moved before .search() and it would work as before).

Removal of validate_image_format from custom image model migrations (Django 1.7+)

If your project is running on Django 1.7, and you have defined a custom image model (by extending the wagtailimages.AbstractImage class), the migration that creates this model will probably have a reference to wagtail.wagtailimages.utils.validators.validate_image_format. This module has now been removed, which will cause manage.py migrate to fail with an ImportError (even if the migration has already been applied). You will need to edit the migration file to remove the line:

import wagtail.wagtailimages.utils.validators

and the validators attribute of the ‘file’ field - that is, the line:

('file', models.ImageField(upload_to=wagtail.wagtailimages.models.get_upload_to,
    width_field='width', height_field='height',
    validators=[wagtail.wagtailimages.utils.validators.validate_image_format],
    verbose_name='File')),

should become:

('file', models.ImageField(upload_to=wagtail.wagtailimages.models.get_upload_to,
    width_field='width', height_field='height', verbose_name='File')),

Wagtail 0.7 release notes

What’s new
New interface for choosing image focal point
_images/focal-point-adjustment.jpg

When editing images, users can now specify a ‘focal point’ region that cropped versions of the image will be centred on. Previously the focal point could only be set automatically, through image feature detection.

Groups and Sites administration interfaces
_images/editor-management.png

The main navigation menu has been reorganised, placing site configuration options in a ‘Settings’ submenu. This includes two new items, which were previously only available through the Django admin backend: ‘Groups’, for setting up user groups with a specific set of permissions, and ‘Sites’, for managing the list of sites served by this Wagtail instance.

Page locking
_images/page-locking.png

Moderators and administrators now have the ability to lock a page, preventing further edits from being made to that page until it is unlocked again.

Minor features
  • The content_type template filter has been removed from the project template, as the same thing can be accomplished with self.get_verbose_name|slugify.
  • Page copy operations now also copy the page revision history.
  • Page models now support a parent_page_types property in addition to subpage types, to restrict the types of page they can be created under.
  • register_snippet can now be invoked as a decorator.
  • The project template (used when running wagtail start) has been updated to Django 1.7.
  • The ‘boost’ applied to the title field on searches has been reduced from 100 to 2.
  • The type method of PageQuerySet (used to filter the queryset to a specific page type) now includes subclasses of the given page type.
  • The update_index management command now updates all backends listed in WAGTAILSEARCH_BACKENDS, or a specific one passed on the command line, rather than just the default backend.
  • The ‘fill’ image resize method now supports an additional parameter defining the closeness of the crop. See Using images in templates
  • Added support for invalidating Cloudflare caches. See Frontend cache invalidator
  • Pages in the explorer can now be ordered by last updated time.
Bug fixes
  • The ‘wagtail start’ command now works on Windows and other environments where the django-admin.py executable is not readily accessible.
  • The external image URL generator no longer stores generated images in Django’s cache; this was an unintentional side-effect of setting cache control headers.
  • The Elasticsearch backend can now search querysets that have been filtered with an ‘in’ clause of a non-list type (such as a ValuesListQuerySet).
  • Logic around the has_unpublished_changes flag has been fixed, to prevent issues with the ‘View draft’ button failing to show in some cases.
  • It is now easier to move pages to the beginning and end of their section
  • Image rendering no longer creates erroneous duplicate Rendition records when the focal point is blank.
Upgrade considerations
Addition of wagtailsites app

The Sites administration interface is contained within a new app, wagtailsites. To enable this on an existing Wagtail project, add the line:

'wagtail.wagtailsites',

to the INSTALLED_APPS list in your project’s settings file.

Title boost on search reduced to 2

Wagtail’s search interface applies a ‘boost’ value to give extra weighting to matches on the title field. The original boost value of 100 was found to be excessive, and in Wagtail 0.7 this has been reduced to 2. If you have used comparable boost values on other fields, to give them similar weighting to title, you may now wish to reduce these accordingly. See Indexing.

Addition of locked field to Page model

The page locking mechanism adds a locked field to wagtailcore.Page, defaulting to False. Any application code working with Page objects should be unaffected, but any code that creates page records using direct SQL, or within existing South migrations using South’s frozen ORM, will fail as this code will be unaware of the new database column. To fix a South migration that fails in this way, add the following line to the 'wagtailcore.page' entry at the bottom of the migration file:

'locked': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
Update to focal_point_key field on custom Rendition models

The focal_point_key field on wagtailimages.Rendition has been changed to null=False, to fix an issue with duplicate renditions being created. If you have defined a custom Rendition model in your project (by extending the wagtailimages.AbstractRendition class), you will need to apply a migration to make the corresponding change on your custom model. Unfortunately neither South nor Django 1.7’s migration system are able to generate this automatically - you will need to customise the migration produced by ./manage.py schemamigration / ./manage.py makemigrations, using the wagtailimages migration as a guide:

Wagtail 0.6 release notes

What’s new
Project template and start project command

Wagtail now has a basic project template built in to make starting new projects much easier.

To use it, install wagtail onto your machine and run wagtail start project_name.

Django 1.7 support

Wagtail can now be used with Django 1.7.

Minor features
Bug fixes
  • Page URL generation now returns correct URLs for sites that have the main ‘serve’ view rooted somewhere other than ‘/’.
  • Search results in the page chooser now respect the page_type parameter on PageChooserPanel.
  • Rendition filenames are now prevented from going over 60 chars, even with a large focal_point_key.
  • Child relations that are defined on a model’s superclass (such as the base Page model) are now picked up correctly by the page editing form, page copy operations and the replace_text management command.
  • Tags on images and documents are now committed to the search index immediately on saving.
Upgrade considerations
All features deprecated in 0.4 have been removed

See: Deprecated features

Search signal handlers have been moved

If you have an import in your urls.py file like from wagtail.wagtailsearch import register_signal_handlers, this must now be changed to from wagtail.wagtailsearch.signal_handlers import register_signal_handlers

Deprecated features
  • The wagtail.wagtailsearch.indexed module has been renamed to wagtail.wagtailsearch.index

Wagtail 0.5 release notes

What’s new
Multiple image uploader

The image uploader UI has been improved to allow multiple images to be uploaded at once.

Image feature detection

Wagtail can now apply face and feature detection on images using OpenCV, and use this to intelligently crop images.

Feature Detection

Using images outside Wagtail

In normal use, Wagtail will generate resized versions of images at the point that they are referenced on a template, which means that those images are not easily accessible for use outside of Wagtail, such as displaying them on external sites. Wagtail now provides a way to obtain URLs to your images, at any size.

Using images outside Wagtail

RoutablePage

A RoutablePage model has been added to allow embedding Django-style URL routing within a page.

RoutablePageMixin

Usage stats for images, documents and snippets

It’s now easier to find where a particular image, document or snippet is being used on your site.

Set the WAGTAIL_USAGE_COUNT_ENABLED setting to True and an icon will appear on the edit page showing you which pages they have been used on.

Copy Page action

The explorer interface now offers the ability to copy pages, with or without subpages.

Minor features
Core
  • Hooks can now be defined using decorator syntax:
@hooks.register('construct_main_menu')
def construct_main_menu(request, menu_items):
    menu_items.append(
        MenuItem('Kittens!', '/kittens/', classnames='icon icon-folder-inverse', order=1000)
    )
  • The lxml library (used for whitelisting and rewriting of rich text fields) has been replaced with the pure-python html5lib library, to simplify installation.
  • A page_unpublished signal has been added.
Admin

  • Explorer nav now rendered separately and fetched with AJAX when needed.

    This improves the general performance of the admin interface for large sites.

Bug fixes
  • Updates to tag fields are now properly committed to the database when publishing directly from the page edit interface.
Upgrade considerations
Urlconf entries for /admin/images/, /admin/embeds/ etc need to be removed

If you created a Wagtail project prior to the release of Wagtail 0.3, it is likely to contain the following entries in its urls.py:

# TODO: some way of getting wagtailimages to register itself within wagtailadmin so that we
# don't have to define it separately here
url(r'^admin/images/', include(wagtailimages_urls)),
url(r'^admin/embeds/', include(wagtailembeds_urls)),
url(r'^admin/documents/', include(wagtaildocs_admin_urls)),
url(r'^admin/snippets/', include(wagtailsnippets_urls)),
url(r'^admin/search/', include(wagtailsearch_admin_urls)),
url(r'^admin/users/', include(wagtailusers_urls)),
url(r'^admin/redirects/', include(wagtailredirects_urls)),

These entries (and the corresponding from wagtail.wagtail* import ... lines) need to be removed from urls.py. (The entry for /admin/ should be left in, however.)

Since Wagtail 0.3, the wagtailadmin module automatically takes care of registering these URL subpaths, so these entries are redundant, and these urlconf modules are not guaranteed to remain stable and backwards-compatible in future. Leaving these entries in place will now cause an ImproperlyConfigured exception to be thrown.

New fields on Image and Rendition models

Several new fields have been added to the Image and Rendition models to support Feature Detection. These will be added to the database when you run ./manage.py migrate. If you have defined a custom image model (by extending the wagtailimages.AbstractImage and wagtailimages.AbstractRendition classes and specifying WAGTAILIMAGES_IMAGE_MODEL in settings), the change needs to be applied to that model’s database table too. Running the command:

./manage.py schemamigration myapp --auto add_image_focal_point_fields

(with ‘myapp’ replaced with your app name) will generate the necessary migration file.

South upgraded to 1.0

In preparation for Django 1.7 support in a future release, Wagtail now depends on South 1.0, and its migration files have been moved from migrations to south_migrations. Older versions of South will fail to find the migrations in the new location.

If your project’s requirements file (most commonly requirements.txt or requirements/base.txt) references a specific older version of South, this must be updated to South 1.0.

Wagtail 0.4.1 release notes

Bug fixes
  • ElasticSearch backend now respects the backward-compatible URLS configuration setting, in addition to HOSTS
  • Documentation fixes

Wagtail 0.4 release notes

What’s new
Private Pages

Wagtail now supports password protecting pages on the frontend, allowing sections of your website to be made private.

Private pages

Python 3 support

Wagtail now supports Python 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.

Scheduled publishing

Editors can now schedule pages to be published or unpublished at specified times.

A new management command has been added (publish_scheduled_pages) to publish pages that have been scheduled by an editor.

Search on QuerySet with Elasticsearch

It’s now possible to perform searches with Elasticsearch on PageQuerySet objects:

>>> from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
>>> Page.objects.live().descendant_of(events_index).search("Hello")
[<Page: Event 1>, <Page: Event 2>]
Sitemap generation

A new module has been added (wagtail.contrib.wagtailsitemaps) which produces XML sitemaps for Wagtail sites.

Sitemap generator

Front-end cache invalidation

A new module has been added (wagtail.contrib.wagtailfrontendcache) which invalidates pages in a frontend cache when they are updated or deleted in Wagtail.

Frontend cache invalidator

Notification preferences

Users can now decide which notifications they receive from Wagtail using a new “Notification preferences” section located in the account settings.

Minor features
Core
  • Any extra arguments given to Page.serve are now passed through to get_context and get_template
  • Added in_menu and not_in_menu methods to PageQuerySet
  • Added search method to PageQuerySet
  • Added get_next_siblings and get_prev_siblings to Page
  • Added page_published signal
  • Added copy method to Page to allow copying of pages
  • Added construct_whitelister_element_rules hook for customising the HTML whitelist used when saving RichText fields
  • Support for setting a subpage_types property on Page models, to define which page types are allowed as subpages
Admin
  • Removed the “More” section from the menu
  • Added pagination to page listings
  • Added a new datetime picker widget
  • Updated hallo.js to version 1.0.4
  • Aesthetic improvements to preview experience
  • Login screen redirects to dashboard if user is already logged in
  • Snippets are now ordered alphabetically
  • Added init_new_page signal
Images
  • Added original as a resizing rule supported by the {% image %} tag
  • image tag now accepts extra keyword arguments to be output as attributes on the img tag
  • Added an attrs property to image rendition objects to output src, width, height and alt attributes all in one go
Other
  • Added styleguide, for Wagtail developers
Bug fixes
  • Animated GIFs are now coalesced before resizing
  • The Wand backend clones images before modifying them
  • The admin breadcrumb is now positioned correctly on mobile
  • The page chooser breadcrumb now updates the chooser modal instead of linking to Explorer
  • Embeds - fixed crash when no HTML field is sent back from the embed provider
  • Multiple sites with same hostname but different ports are now allowed
  • It is no longer possible to create multiple sites with is_default_site = True
Backwards-incompatible changes
ElasticUtils replaced with elasticsearch-py

If you are using the elasticsearch backend, you must install the elasticsearch module into your environment.

Note

If you are using an older version of Elasticsearch (< 1.0) you must install elasticsearch version 0.4.x.

Addition of expired column may break old data migrations involving pages

The scheduled publishing mechanism adds an expired field to wagtailcore.Page, defaulting to False. Any application code working with Page objects should be unaffected, but any code that creates page records using direct SQL, or within existing South migrations using South’s frozen ORM, will fail as this code will be unaware of the expired database column. To fix a South migration that fails in this way, add the following line to the 'wagtailcore.page' entry at the bottom of the migration file:

'expired': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
Deprecated features
Template tag libraries renamed

The following template tag libraries have been renamed:

  • pageurl => wagtailcore_tags
  • rich_text => wagtailcore_tags
  • embed_filters => wagtailembeds_tags
  • image_tags => wagtailimages_tags

The old names will continue to work, but output a DeprecationWarning - you are advised to update any {% load %} tags in your templates to refer to the new names.

New search field configuration format

indexed_fields is now deprecated and has been replaced by a new search field configuration format called search_fields. See Indexing for how to define a search_fields property on your models.

Page.route method should now return a RouteResult

Previously, the route method called serve and returned an HttpResponse object. This has now been split up so serve is called separately and route must now return a RouteResult object.

If you are overriding Page.route on any of your page models, you will need to update the method to return a RouteResult object. The old method of returning an HttpResponse will continue to work, but this will throw a DeprecationWarning and bypass the before_serve_page hook, which means in particular that Private pages will not work on those page types. See Adding Endpoints with Custom route() Methods.

Wagtailadmins hooks module has moved to wagtailcore

If you use any wagtail_hooks.py files in your project, you may have an import like: from wagtail.wagtailadmin import hooks

Change this to: from wagtail.wagtailcore import hooks

Miscellaneous
  • Page.show_as_mode replaced with Page.serve_preview
  • Page.get_page_modes method replaced with Page.preview_modes property
  • Page.get_other_siblings replaced with Page.get_siblings(inclusive=False)