A no-fluff deployment runbook for getting a Cookiecutter Django project live on DigitalOcean using Docker and Traefik. Covers the full path from droplet provisioning to a working production deployment with SSL, plus the gotchas I keep hitting.

Pre-flight Checklist

Before touching the droplet, confirm:

Cookiecutter Django project generated locally with production = Docker , Traefik (or Nginx), Postgres , and your email backend of choice (Mailgun, SendGrid, Anymail, etc.)

Project pushed to a private GitHub repo

Domain registered with DNS access

DigitalOcean account ready

Local SSH keypair ( ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 ) ready

All .envs/.production/* files prepared locally (these are git-ignored and must be transferred separately)

Required env files:

.envs/.production/.django .envs/.production/.postgres

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Generate strong values for DJANGO_SECRET_KEY , DJANGO_ADMIN_URL , POSTGRES_PASSWORD , etc:

python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(64))"

Enter…