Deployment & Architecture Alignment

[JosePizarro3]

@LucasZimm

This super-issue tracks all tasks required to align with institutional deployment standards and the cookiecutter-django template expectations.

GitHub will help us create sub-issues and track progress. We need to split responsibilities, so it is clear who does what.

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🔥 High Priority (Must-Have)

• Create separate dev and prod settings modules. @JosePizarro3
• Add required production security settings (HTTPS, HSTS, secure cookies, proxy headers).
• Add Dockerfile and minimal docker-compose setup for IT deployment. @JosePizarro3
• Align database usage to institutional PostgreSQL version. @JosePizarro3

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⚙️ Medium–High Priority (Important Enhancements)

• Add/improve automated tests and ensure clean CI integration. @LucasZimm
• Evaluate Celery for running parsing/upload tasks asynchronously. @LucasZimm
• Integrate Sentry for centralized error monitoring. @JosePizarro3
• Define standardized storage strategy for uploads/temporary files (tmp dir, S3/GCS/Azure/nginx if needed). @LucasZimm
• Decide how to serve static files in production (Whitenoise vs cloud storage). @JosePizarro3 (tho I think this is done already with Whitenoise, we just need to clarify it in our docs)

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🧩 Medium Priority (Structural or Workflow Improvements)

• Add pre-commit hooks for lint and formatting checks. @JosePizarro3
• Decide whether to introduce a custom Django User model for future-proofing. @JosePizarro3
• Review and document static vs media separation in the project structure. @LucasZimm

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🎨 Low Priority (Optional / Cosmetic / Future Considerations)

• Decide whether to adopt Bootstrap v5 or keep minimal CSS. @JosePizarro3
• Assess whether ASGI/WebSockets are needed for future live progress updates. @JosePizarro3
• Evaluate whether a build pipeline (Gulp/Webpack) is necessary. @JosePizarro3 (likely not)
• Consider using django-allauth only if institutional SSO requirements change. @JosePizarro3

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💤 No Priority (Currently Not Needed, Tracked from the cookiecutter-django repo)

• Add email support via Anymail (only if email notifications become needed).
• Enable Mailpit for local email testing (only if emails are added).
• Add Heroku Procfile (not relevant).
• Add PythonAnywhere deployment docs (not relevant).

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📌 Notes

Please keep all discussion related to deployment, architecture, and compatibility inside this issue.
Subtasks can be broken off into separate issues as needed, but keep this super-issue updated.