Scholarship Dashboard

This project is a Django application for browsing scholarships, applying online, and managing student and admin dashboards.

Local run

1. Create and activate a virtual environment.
2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run migrations:

python manage.py migrate

4. Start the development server:

python manage.py runserver

The app uses SQLite locally unless you set DATABASE_URL.

Email and newsletter setup

Newsletter subscriptions now store subscriber emails in Django and send a branded welcome email. To make delivery work outside local development, configure SMTP-style environment variables:

EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend
EMAIL_HOST=smtp.your-provider.com
EMAIL_PORT=587
EMAIL_HOST_USER=your-smtp-user
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=your-smtp-password
EMAIL_USE_TLS=true
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL=ScholarHub <hello@your-domain.com>
SUPPORT_EMAIL=support@your-domain.com
SITE_URL=https://your-live-domain.com

For local testing, you can keep EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend so emails print to the terminal instead of going out to a real inbox. The app now auto-loads a root .env file, so copying .env.example to .env is enough for local email setup.

To verify delivery after you add real SMTP credentials, run:

python manage.py email_doctor --connect
python manage.py send_test_email --to you@example.com

If you want the email to include a real dashboard link for an existing account, add:

python manage.py send_test_email --to you@example.com --user your_username

Render deployment

This repo includes a render.yaml Blueprint for a Python web service plus a managed Postgres database.

What the deployment uses

• Gunicorn for the Django app server
• WhiteNoise for production static files
• Postgres in production through DATABASE_URL
• A persistent disk mounted at /opt/render/project/src/media for uploaded files

Deploy steps

1. Push this repo to GitHub.
2. In Render, click New -> Blueprint.
3. Select this repository and apply the Blueprint.
4. The Blueprint build runs migrations and collects static files automatically.
5. After the first deploy, create a superuser from the Render shell:

python manage.py createsuperuser

6. If you want seed data, run your preferred management commands from the Render shell, for example:

python manage.py seed_scholarships

Important environment behavior

• SECRET_KEY must be set in production. The Blueprint generates one automatically.
• DEBUG is set to false in production.
• ALLOWED_HOSTS automatically includes Render's hostname when RENDER_EXTERNAL_HOSTNAME is present.
• CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS automatically includes Render's external URL when RENDER_EXTERNAL_URL is present.
• Configure the email variables above in Render as well if you want newsletter welcome emails to reach real inboxes.

Notes

• The repository still has a stale Dashboard/db.sqlite3 file locked by another process. The live app now uses the root-level db.sqlite3.
• Uploaded files need the persistent disk to survive redeploys on Render.