Overview

Problem: Many news platforms lack real-time notifications, subscription-based updates, and efficient content management, resulting in disconnected user experiences.

Solution: News Portal — a Django-based news platform with category subscriptions, instant email notifications, and weekly digests powered by Celery and Redis.

Technologies: Python, Django 4.2, Celery, Redis, django-allauth, Bootstrap.

Result: Increased user engagement, timely delivery of news, and simplified content management.

Key Features

• User registration (email) and optional Yandex OAuth.
• Authors can create/edit/delete articles (news/posts) with rich text.
• Category subscriptions with instant email notifications.
• Weekly digests (Monday 08:00) via Celery Beat.
• User groups: Basic (read), Premium (up to 5 posts/day), Authors (full CRUD).
• Caching (low-level, per-page, template fragments) and structured logging.
• Security: CSRF/XSS mitigation, safe ORM queries.

Run Locally

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Rostislav62/NewsPortal-Var1.git NewsPortal
   cd NewsPortal

2. Create virtual environment & install dependencies:

   python3.10 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   python -m pip install --upgrade pip
   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Create .env:

   SECRET_KEY=<strong-secret>
   DEBUG=True
   ALLOWED_HOSTS=127.0.0.1,localhost
   EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend
   CELERY_BROKER_URL=redis://127.0.0.1:6379/0
   CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND=redis://127.0.0.1:6379/1

4. Run migrations & create superuser:

   python manage.py makemigrations
   python manage.py migrate
   python manage.py createsuperuser

5. (Optional) Start Redis & Celery:

   sudo apt install -y redis-server
   sudo systemctl enable --now redis-server
   celery -A NewsPortal worker -l info
   celery -A NewsPortal beat -l info

6. Run server:

   python manage.py runserver

Demo Video