Communication to Care

The Django website for Communication to Care, published at com2care.com. It presents the com2care medical-imaging research platform, product modules, learning videos, downloads, FAQs, and support information.

Start with Docker

Docker Compose includes working local defaults, database migrations, demo content, and the first admin account. No setup command or .env file is required for a local demonstration.

docker compose up -d --build

Open:

• Website: http://localhost:8000
• Admin: http://localhost:8000/admin/

Initial local admin credentials:

Username: admin
Password: cmosV6Tw46Odv7UN

Change the password immediately after the first login using Django Admin → Change password. The startup process never resets an existing admin password unless credential synchronization is explicitly enabled.

Automatic startup behavior

Every web-container start performs these idempotent steps:

1. Wait for PostgreSQL.
2. Collect static files.
3. Apply Django migrations.
4. Normalize public database text and URLs to the Communication to Care identity.
5. Seed demonstration content only when all public content tables are empty.
6. Create the configured admin account only when it does not exist.
7. Start Django or Gunicorn.

Demo content includes:

• A com2care product with five medical-imaging modules.
• Articles, structured specifications, FAQs, and release examples.
• Homepage and About page sections with local images.
• A generated Communication to Care hero image.
• Relevant external YouTube tutorials for DICOM review and image segmentation.
• support@com2care.com contact data.

Content created or edited by an admin is preserved on later container restarts.

Project permissions in Django Admin

Published projects remain visible to everyone on the public website. Project permissions apply only inside Django Admin. Users with Staff status can open the admin panel; by default, each staff user can view and edit only main projects and sub-projects they created. Main and sub-projects have independent access.

A superuser can configure a user under Admin → Users → [user]:

• Project access policy: own projects (default), no projects by default, view all, or view and edit all.
• Project access overrides: choose one main project or sub-project per row and set no access, view only, or view and edit. An override wins over the default and the all-projects policy.

Project articles and videos inherit the permissions of their parent project. Existing projects without a recorded creator remain accessible to superusers; assign access overrides for other staff users as needed.

Optional configuration

Copy .env.example to .env only when you want to override the local defaults:

cp .env.example .env

Important variables:

Variable	Purpose
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY	Required strong secret for production
ALLOWED_HOSTS	Hostnames, including com2care.com and comp2care.com
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS	Full trusted origins with https://; both production domains are always included
POSTGRES_DB	PostgreSQL database name
POSTGRES_USER	PostgreSQL user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	PostgreSQL password
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_ENABLED	Set False to disable automatic admin creation
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_USERNAME	First admin username
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_EMAIL	First admin email
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD	First admin password
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_SYNC_PASSWORD	Set True for one restart to rotate an existing admin password from environment values

For a server-side password rotation, set the new DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD, temporarily set DJANGO_SUPERUSER_SYNC_PASSWORD=True, restart the web service once, then restore it to False. An admin can always change their own password through Django Admin without changing server configuration.

Production

Use strong values in .env, terminate TLS with a reverse proxy, and start only the production Compose file:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d --build

At minimum, replace these local defaults in production:

• DJANGO_SECRET_KEY
• POSTGRES_PASSWORD
• DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD
• SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT=True

The default production host configuration already includes com2care.com and www.com2care.com.

Manual development

Requirements:

• Python 3.12+
• PostgreSQL 14+

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
cp .env.example .env
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py seed_content --if-empty
python manage.py ensure_superuser
python manage.py runserver

Persistent local preview without Docker

The local preview uses instance/preview.sqlite3, which survives server restarts and is ignored by Git. Put the preview admin credentials in instance/preview_admin.env (also ignored by Git):

DJANGO_SUPERUSER_USERNAME=admin
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_EMAIL=admin@localhost
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD=your-local-password
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_SYNC_PASSWORD=False

Then start the preview with ./run_preview.sh. It applies migrations and ensures the admin account exists before starting the server. Existing passwords are preserved; set DJANGO_SUPERUSER_SYNC_PASSWORD=True for one start only if you intentionally need to reset the account password. This preview database is separate from the PostgreSQL database used by Docker and production.

Management commands

# Add demo data only to a completely empty public database
python manage.py seed_content --if-empty

# Intentionally replace all public content with the demo dataset
python manage.py seed_content --flush

# Normalize existing public text, slugs, URLs, and email addresses
python manage.py normalize_brand

# Create or optionally synchronize the configured admin
python manage.py ensure_superuser

Tests

python manage.py test apps

or:

pytest

Project structure

config/                     Django settings and root URLs
apps/core/                  Branding, contact settings, bootstrap commands
apps/pages/                 Home, About, FAQ, Contact, custom pages, videos
apps/products/              Products, articles, releases, product videos
templates/                  Django templates
static/css/main.css         Site design system
static/images/              com2care brand and editorial assets
static/js/main.js           Navigation and interaction behavior
docker-compose.yml          PostgreSQL and production web service
docker-compose.override.yml Local development override
entrypoint.sh               Automated database and content bootstrap

Technology

• Django
• PostgreSQL 16
• Gunicorn
• WhiteNoise
• Docker Compose
• Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript