Deploying Django with uWSGI and Nginx: A Step-by-Step Guide

Kehem Team August 10, 2025 · 3 min read

🚀 Deploying Django with uWSGI and Nginx: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’ve built your Django app and it’s ready for the world, the next big question is: How do I deploy it efficiently in production?

A common, reliable stack is:

Django (your app)
uWSGI (application server)
Nginx (reverse proxy and static/media handler)

This combination is fast, secure, and scalable.

1. Why uWSGI + Nginx?

uWSGI is a high-performance WSGI server that talks directly to Django.
Nginx is a lightweight web server that handles incoming requests, serves static files, and forwards dynamic requests to uWSGI.

Advantages:

Handles more traffic with less CPU/RAM
Better static/media file delivery
Security through process isolation
Easier scaling

2. Production Checklist Before Deployment

✅ Python virtual environment ready
✅ Django settings configured for production (DEBUG=False, ALLOWED_HOSTS)
✅ Static files collected (python manage.py collectstatic)
✅ Database migrations done (python manage.py migrate)

3. Installing Dependencies

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-venv nginx uwsgi uwsgi-plugin-python3 -y

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install django uwsgi

4. uWSGI Configuration

Create a file myproject_uwsgi.ini:

[uwsgi]
chdir           = /path/to/myproject
module          = myproject.wsgi:application
home            = /path/to/myproject/venv
master          = true
processes       = 5
socket          = /run/uwsgi/myproject.sock
chmod-socket    = 660
vacuum          = true
die-on-term     = true

Explanation:

chdir: Project root
module: Django WSGI entry point
home: Virtualenv path
socket: UNIX socket for fast communication with Nginx
processes: Number of worker processes
chmod-socket: Set permissions so Nginx can connect

5. uWSGI Service with systemd

Create /etc/systemd/system/myproject.service:

[Unit]
Description=uWSGI instance to serve myproject
After=network.target

[Service]
User=www-data
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/myproject
Environment="PATH=/path/to/myproject/venv/bin"
ExecStart=/path/to/myproject/venv/bin/uwsgi --ini myproject_uwsgi.ini

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl start myproject
sudo systemctl enable myproject

6. Nginx Configuration

Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location /static/ {
        root /path/to/myproject;
    }

    location /media/ {
        root /path/to/myproject;
    }

    location / {
        include uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass unix:/run/uwsgi/myproject.sock;
    }
}

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx

7. Security & Performance Tips

Use UNIX sockets instead of TCP for faster local communication.
Enable Gzip in Nginx for smaller response sizes.
Set keepalive_timeout in Nginx to reduce idle connections.
Run uWSGI in master mode with multiple workers for better concurrency.
Use --lazy-apps in uWSGI if you have large initialization times.

8. Final Test

sudo systemctl status myproject
sudo systemctl status nginx

Visit http://example.com in your browser — your Django app should be live 🎉.

Conclusion

Using uWSGI and Nginx for Django deployment gives you speed, stability, and scalability. This setup is battle-tested in production environments and is highly configurable for future growth.