Customize the admin look and feel HTML not overwriting: Customizing your project’s templates

Using Django Getting Started
1

Hello, apologies for the simple question but i have spent a significant amout of time on this:

Tutorial 7 where you customise the admin base_site.html to redirect to your own templates. Mines refuses to override. This is my dir structure:

(venv) ➜  mysite tree
.
├── db.sqlite3
├── manage.py
├── mysite
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __pycache__
│   │   ├── __init__.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── settings.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── urls.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   └── wsgi.cpython-312.pyc
│   ├── asgi.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
├── polls
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __pycache__
│   │   ├── __init__.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── admin.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── apps.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── models.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── tests.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   ├── urls.cpython-312.pyc
│   │   └── views.cpython-312.pyc
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── apps.py
│   ├── migrations
│   │   ├── 0001_initial.py
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   └── __pycache__
│   │       ├── 0001_initial.cpython-312.pyc
│   │       └── __init__.cpython-312.pyc
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── static
│   │   └── polls
│   │       ├── images
│   │       │   └── giraffe_background.jpeg
│   │       └── style.css
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── polls
│   │       ├── detail.html
│   │       ├── index.html
│   │       └── results.html
│   ├── tests.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── views.py
└── templates
    └── admin
        └── base_site.html

This is my settings.py TEMPLATES:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [BASE_DIR / "templates"], 
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

and the base_site.html at documentation/mysite/templates/admin

{% extends "admin/base.html" %}

{% block title %}{% if subtitle %}{{ subtitle }} | {% endif %}{{ title }} | {{ site_title|default:_('Django site admin') }}{% endblock %}

{% block branding %}
<div id="site-name"><a href="{% url 'admin:index' %}">{{ site_header|default:_('Polling administration') }}</a></div>
{% if user.is_anonymous %}
  {% include "admin/color_theme_toggle.html" %}
{% endif %}
{% endblock %}

{% block nav-global %}{% endblock %}

Restarted server several times and there is no unsaved changes. Thanks!

2

What are your TEMPLATES in settings.py?

  1. Make sure the DIRS option in the TEMPLATES setting points to the correct directory where your base_site.html file is located. In your case, it should be BASE_DIR / "templates/admin".

  2. Double-check that the APP_DIRS option is set to True. This allows Django to look for templates within the templates directory of each installed app.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [BASE_DIR / "templates/admin"], 
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]
3

In the base_site.html file, you need to replace the entire {{ site_header|default:_('Django administration') }} section (including the curly braces) with “Polls administration”. In your example, you only replaced the default filter value, which only displays if the site_header attribute is blank.

By default, the site_header attribute is “Django administration” so the default value you’re providing is not being used.

The site name div should be:

<div id="site-name"><a href="{% url 'admin:index' %}">Polls administration</a></div>

I made the same mistake!