Django_dreamhost is a project mainly written in Shell, it's free.
Super-duper script that configures a clean Python 2.5, Django, PIL, FLUP and Mysql support in Dreamhost
access your dreamhost account through SSH and run: curl http://github.com/gabrielfalcao/django_dreamhost/raw/master/django_dreamhost.sh -o - | bash
afterwards you'll be able to setup new django projects with the command: djangify myproj
There are many ways to set up a Python environment without root permissions.
I really don't like virtualenv, easy_install and other python's workaroundish solutions.
This is a structure that creates a brand new python environment to your user, so you can put your Django projects running on Dreamhost in a few minutes.
The main script, django_dreamhost.sh does everything in a single shot.
Download the following tarballs:
Python 2.6.5
Setuptools 0.6c11
Create a fake-root directory in user's home: $HOME/.myroot
Create "etc" subdir
Compile and install Python under $HOME/usr as $prefix
Install the rest of python modules (Django, PIL, etc.)
Download install auxiliary scripts, through script-templates and replace its internal strings.
per project .htaccess template
per project WSGI passenger template
djangifier template
Create the default projects dir:
$HOME/projects
The big feature of this project is the djangifier, it is a script that setup a new Django project structure.
You just get to run.
I.e:
djangify my-project-name
creates a directory: $HOME/projects/my-project-name
adds a ready-to-run copy of files: .htaccess
and passenger_wsgi.py
That's all!