How to create a fullstack application using Django and Python Part 30

Friday, November 8, 2024 at 11:20 AM | 2 min read

Last modified on Thursday, July 16, 2026 at 12:29 PM

#fullstack development, #macOS, #django default authentication, #django, #python3, #series

Reception sign and bell on top of a reception desk

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on pexels.com

Important Note: Before committing anything to Git or pushing anything to remote, please visit How to create a fullstack application using Django and Python Part 4 where I discuss how to add the python-dotenv package to the Django site and why it is crucial to do it. This article assumes you have a working knowledge of Git.

Table of Contents

Update (July 2026): This walkthrough was written against Django 5.1, which reached full end-of-life in December 2025 and is no longer receiving security patches. Run python -m django --version to check which version you have.

I wrote this series as a live process, so sometimes it might seem confusing, but it all works out in the end.

According to research I conducted after a couple of failed deployments on Heroku, I found that when using the default Django authentication system, the following URL pattern should be added in my accounts/urls.py file:

urlpatterns = [
    path("accounts/", include("django.contrib.auth.urls")),
]

My accounts/urls.py file should now look like the following:

from django.urls import path
from .views import profile, profile_detail, ProfileListView, UserUpdateView, signup
from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views

urlpatterns = [
    path('account/', UserUpdateView.as_view(), name='my_account'),
    path("profile/", profile, name="users-profile"),
    path('profile-detail/<int:pk>/', profile_detail, name='profile'),
    path("profiles/", ProfileListView.as_view(), name="users-profile-list"),
    path("signup/", signup, name="signup"),
    path(
        "login/", auth_views.LoginView.as_view(), name="login"
    ),
    path("logout/", auth_views.LogoutView.as_view(), name="logout"),
    path(
        "password_reset/",
        auth_views.PasswordResetView.as_view(),
        name="password_reset",
    ),
    path(
        "password_reset/done/",
        auth_views.PasswordResetDoneView.as_view(),
        name="password_reset_done",
    ),
    path(
        "reset/<uidb64>/<token>/",
        auth_views.PasswordResetConfirmView.as_view(),
        name="password_reset_confirm",
    ),
    path(
        "reset/done/",
        auth_views.PasswordResetCompleteView.as_view(),
        name="password_reset_complete",
    ),
    path(
        "password_change/",
        auth_views.PasswordChangeView.as_view(),
        name="password_change",
    ),
    path(
        "password_change/done/",
        auth_views.PasswordChangeDoneView.as_view(),
        name="password_change_done",
    ),
]

Adding these default registration/password reset URLs results in the generation of the following URL patterns:

accounts/login/ [name='login']
accounts/logout/ [name='logout']
accounts/password_change/ [name='password_change']
accounts/password_change/done/ [name='password_change_done']
accounts/password_reset/ [name='password_reset']
accounts/password_reset/done/ [name='password_reset_done']
accounts/reset/<uidb64>/<token>/ [name='password_reset_confirm']
accounts/reset/done/ [name='password_reset_complete']

According to the Django authentication system documentation, the associated templates should reside in a directory called registration. Now my templates directory should look like the following:

- templates/
    ...
    - registration/
        - login.html
        - password_change_done.html
        - password_change.html
        - password_reset_complete.html
        - password_reset_confirm.html
        - password_reset_done.html
        - password_reset_email.html
        - password_reset_subject.txt
        - password_reset.html
        - signup.html
    ...

Since the signup.html template is not included in the list of URL patterns, when a new visitor lands on the site, they see the link to the sign in (login) page and not the signup page. However, there is a link to the signup page on the login page.

Code associated with this post

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Conclusion

In this section, I place the default Django authentication system related templates into a new directory called registration inside the templates directory, I move the associated URLs into accounts/urls.py, and add the associated default url pattern to django_boards/urls.py. This helps ensure that django-boards deployment to Heroku would be successful.