About Shelter
A quiet gospel-publishing catalog built to show real Django craft — not a clone of any publisher, and not a claim of years of production tenure.
What it is
Shelter is a server-rendered Django app: browse books by author and category,
search and sort the catalog, use a session cart with demo checkout (USD),
sign up to keep a private reading list (Your Shelter),
and manage content through a site-styled staff panel at /manage/.
A thin read-only JSON API mirrors the catalog.
What it proves
- Models, migrations, and admin-friendly labeling
- Templates, forms, auth, and permissions
- Search / filter / pagination
- Session cart, demo checkout, order snapshots & confirmation email
- DRF list + detail endpoints
- Postgres-ready settings, static files, automated tests
- Deploy pattern for serverless + managed Postgres
Stack
- Python 3.12+ · Django 5.2
- Django REST Framework (read-only API)
- SQLite locally · Postgres (Neon) in production
- WhiteNoise · Vercel