The Bucket List

A personal bucket-list and to-do tracker built with Django. Sign in, write down the things you want to do, see, or become, and check them off as you get there. Each completed item is timestamped, so the list doubles as a quiet record of promises you kept to yourself.

Features

• Account registration and authentication (Django's built-in auth system)
• Per-user lists — everyone only sees their own items
• Create, edit, and delete list items
• Mark items complete, with an automatically recorded completion date
• Search across your list
• A count of how many items are still outstanding
• Clean empty and no-results states
• Fully responsive layout, hand-written CSS, no external frameworks or CDNs
• Visible keyboard focus states and semantic form markup for accessibility

Tech stack

• Backend: Django 4.2 (Python)
• Database: SQLite for local development (swap DATABASES for Postgres in production if needed)
• Frontend: Server-rendered Django templates, hand-authored vanilla CSS (no Bootstrap, Tailwind, or other frameworks/CDNs — the app renders correctly with no internet connection)
• Static files in production: WhiteNoise
• App server: Gunicorn

Screenshots

Screenshots live in assets/screenshots: the sign-in page, the registration page, and the bucket list itself with a mix of open and completed items.

Local setup

Requirements

• Python 3.11+ (the project also runs on Python 3.10–3.12)
• pip

1. Clone and enter the project

git clone https://github.com/Jenks00/Bucketlist.git
cd Bucketlist

2. Create and activate a virtual environment

python -m venv venv
# macOS/Linux
source venv/bin/activate
# Windows
venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure environment variables

Copy the example environment file and adjust as needed:

cp .env.example .env

Then set DJANGO_SECRET_KEY, DJANGO_DEBUG, and DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS. In local development you can leave DJANGO_DEBUG=True and the defaults will work out of the box. manage.py does not load .env automatically — either export the variables in your shell before running the server, or use a tool such as django-environ or python-dotenv if you would like automatic loading.

5. Apply database migrations

python manage.py migrate

6. Create an admin user (optional)

python manage.py createsuperuser

7. Run the development server

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ and register an account to get started.

Project structure

Bucketlist/
├── bucketlistprj/        # Django project settings, URLs, WSGI/ASGI entry points
├── bucket_list/           # The bucket-list app: models, views, templates, static assets
│   ├── migrations/
│   ├── static/bucket_list/css/style.css
│   ├── templates/bucket_list/
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── views.py
│   └── urls.py
├── assets/screenshots/    # Screenshots used in this README
├── manage.py
├── requirements.txt
├── Procfile
└── .env.example

Deployment

The project is ready to deploy to any Heroku-style platform (Heroku, Railway, Render, etc.) with no additional configuration:

• Procfile declares the web process: web: gunicorn bucketlistprj.wsgi
• WhiteNoise is wired into MIDDLEWARE and STATICFILES_STORAGE in settings.py, so static files are served correctly in production without a separate static file host or CDN
• Settings are environment-driven: SECRET_KEY, DEBUG, and ALLOWED_HOSTS are all read from environment variables (DJANGO_SECRET_KEY, DJANGO_DEBUG, DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS), with safe local-development defaults when they are not set

To deploy:

1. Provision the app on your platform of choice and connect this repository.
2. Set the environment variables from .env.example in the platform's dashboard, using a freshly generated DJANGO_SECRET_KEY and DJANGO_DEBUG=False.
3. Set DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS to the domain(s) the app will be served from.
4. Run python manage.py migrate and python manage.py collectstatic as a release/build step (most platforms run these automatically when they detect a Django project, or you can add them to a build script).
5. Deploy. The Procfile will start the app with Gunicorn.

For a persistent database in production, swap the SQLite configuration in bucketlistprj/settings.py for a managed Postgres (or similar) database, typically by reading a DATABASE_URL environment variable.

License

Released under the MIT License.