How to create a fullstack application using Django and Python Part 5

    Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 8:45 PM | 3 min read

    Last modified on Thursday, July 16, 2026 at 12:36 PM

    #macOS, #django, #env, #fullstack development, #grep, #pipe, #python3, #series, #vim, #virtualenv, #vscode

    Collage of different names and colors

    Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on unsplash.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.

    Changing a Django project name after it has already been migrated

    When I first created the project for this Django site, I did not think much about the project name, and named it basic_django_web_page. I named the root directory of the site basic-django-web-page. But after already having made migrations (makemigrations) and then migrated the site (migrate), I wanted to change the root directory of the Django site to django-boards, and the project name to django_boards. It made more sense and was more consistent with the rest of the site namespaces. I had to change both high level project directory to django_boards and the project subdirectory to django_boards as well.

    But how was I going to do this?

    Researching the name changing issue

    I had never changed a project name after making model migrations, but I was determined to make the name change so that I would not have to re-create the site. That simply would have been a waste of time.

    I came across all sorts of solutions which just didn't work, so I won't even bother mentioning them. Then I came across a thread on Stack Overflow that gave me the answer(s) I was looking for!

    Changing old project name to new project name throughout the Django site

    I typed in the old project name in the Search (eyeglass icon) field in Visual Studio Code to quickly find out where it came up in the project code base:

    1. It appeared in .gitignore.
    2. It appeared in manage.py.
    3. It appeared in asgi.py.
    4. It appeared in settings.py.
    5. It appeared in urls.py.
    6. It appeared in wsgi.py.

    I removed all instances of basic_django_web_page and replaced it with django_boards. This included any reference to the project name in string comments! Those references count too.

    After I did all that, committed the changes, pushed them to GitHub, and then tried to run the development server, it worked.

    But... when I went back later to the same thread where I found my solutions, I learned that there was still more checking I should do.

    Running the env | grep django command

    I also learned in the Stack Overflow thread (listed in Related Resources) that I should run the env | grep django command to see if the old project name was lingering anywhere in the virtual environment (venv). The following was returned in Terminal:

    PATH=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/basic-django-web-page/venv/bin:/Users/mariacam/.pyenv/shims:/Users/mariacam/.pyenv/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/Users/mariacam/mongodb/bin:/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin:/Library/PostgreSQL/10/bin:/Users/mariacam/.rbenv/bin:/Users/mariacam/.yarn/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/bin:/Users/mariacam/.nvm/versions/node/v20.15.0/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/mariacam/.rvm/bin
PWD=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/django-boards/django_boards
OLDPWD=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/django-boards
VIRTUAL_ENV=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/basic-django-web-page/venv

    Django recognized the new project name, and set it in all the right places in the code base, i.e., including DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE in django-boards/django_boards/django_boards/asgi.py and django-boards/django_boards/django_boards/wsgi.py, but the original root directory name did appear in the VIRTUAL_ENV variable.

    Breaking down the env | grep django command

    The env | grep django command is used to filter environment variables related to Django.

    • The env command lists all the environment variables in the current shell session.
    • | (pipe) operator pipes the output of the env command to the grep command.
    • grep django searches through the output for lines that contain the string "django".

    The env | grep django command displays all environment variables that include "django" in their names or values. This is useful when I want to check any environment settings related to Django.

    All I had to do to fix the value of VIRTUAL_ENV was the following:

    1. I opened up venv/bin/activate in vim with the following command:
    vim venv/bin/activate
    1. Then I added the following at the bottom of the file:
    export VIRTUAL_ENV=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/django-boards/venv
    1. Then I ran the env | grep django command again, and the following was returned:
    PATH=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/basic-django-web-page/venv/bin:/Users/mariacam/.pyenv/shims:/Users/mariacam/.pyenv/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/Users/mariacam/mongodb/bin:/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin:/Library/PostgreSQL/10/bin:/Users/mariacam/.rbenv/bin:/Users/mariacam/.yarn/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/bin:/Users/mariacam/.nvm/versions/node/v20.15.0/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/mariacam/.rvm/bin
PWD=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/django-boards
OLDPWD=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/django-boards/django_boards
VIRTUAL_ENV=/Users/mariacam/Python-Development/django-boards/venv

    Success! Django updated my VIRTUAL_ENV variable value to the correct path!

    And that is how I changed the name of my Django project from "basic_django_web_page" to "django_boards".

    Code associated with this post

    To view the code associated with this post, please visit d67f347.

    Conclusion

    In this section, I discuss and show how I changed a project name after it had already been created and migrated.

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