Does django-cms really integrate with django and models

Question

I am migrating an existing small business admin system that uses a variety of spreadsheets and access databases to a Linux server to provide both intranet and internet access to our own office staff, to external partners and to customers.

There is some fairly complex database work which will be using postgreSQL and python.

There needs to be a professional looking public website which can access some of the database content both to generic "customers" and tailored data visibility to actual clients.

None of the traditional CMS offerings like wordpress, drupal, joomla etc seemed flexible enough, so I found my way to django.

I've built models, populated data tables, built some basic views to manipulate the data and started to play a bit with html layout tags and css, and I've started looking at forms including crispy-forms.

I need to work with pdf files - scanning, uploading, splitting into single pages, displaying on the site alongside form data entry etc.

I was hoping that I could use django-cms to handle the aspects of the public facing words and pictures and dealing with the jpgs pdfs etc, and to do the page layout stuff, while using django models and python to simplify the database access and provide the intelligence.

When I read the django-cms docs around integrating models I get the impression that there is not really a proper integration - that you can build a site that switches between cms pages and django pages or maybe embeds a django view into a cms page, but I'm not sure if I can do the look and feel and static bits in cms and the dynamic bits on the same page in django without still having to do the work in django as well.

the django system revolves around the models, the django-cms docs read as if models are some sort of extra bit you might want to use.

There's talk of the different ways to integrate django models but they all treat the django model as a foreign item that can be added.

I've found other people who've asked "how does django-cms work with django models" and the answers seem to be no different from those that ask "how do I ad a django model to a drupal site"

So my question really is - does django-cms integrate with django to provide ease of building sites with good integration between cms features and model features or are they really two separate systems that can share space on the same page with a bit of work but don't play nice together in any useful way?

Is there another tool I can use for my static stuff and page formatting and navigation to integrate with my models and python code?

Answer 1

Yes

Yes, it does integrate with django and it does provide ease of building sites with good integration between cms features and model features. Like comment by Simeon Visser hinted - you can create your own plugins to add managing different features into django cms part. And most often - most things will not need such integration - simple django admin views and models will suffice.