How to Install Wagtail on Windows 11

Wagtail is a popular open-source content management system (CMS) that is built on Django, which is another popular web framework. This tutorial will guide you through the steps necessary to install Wagtail on a Windows 11 environment.

Prerequisites

Before installing Wagtail, you must have the following prerequisites:

  • A computer with Windows 11 installed
  • Python 3.x (either via Anaconda or official release)
  • Pip package installer
  • Git version control system

If you do not have Python, Pip or Git installed on your computer, please install them first. To install Python and Pip, you can download the official installer from https://www.python.org/downloads/. To install Git, you can download the installer from https://git-scm.com/download/win.

Installation

  1. Open the Command Prompt as an administrator by right-clicking on the Start button and selecting "Command Prompt (Admin)."

  2. Install virtual environment package via pip: pip install virtualenv

  3. Create a new virtual environment with command python -m venv env and activate it by running .\env\Scripts\activate

  4. Switch to the directory where you want to install your Wagtail project with cd path/to/your/project

  5. Clone the Wagtail Git repository using the following command: git clone https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail.git

  6. Enter the Wagtail directory by running cd wagtail

  7. Run command pip install -r requirements/base.txt to install the required packages for the Wagtail project.

  8. Run the command pip install -e . to install Wagtail in your virtual environment.

  9. Run cd .. to move up to the root directory of your project.

  10. Run the following command to create a new Wagtail project: wagtail start your_project_name

  11. Run cd your_project_name to switch to the newly created project directory.

  12. Run python manage.py runserver to start the development server.

  13. You can now access the development server by visiting http://localhost:8000 in your web browser.

Conclusion

With the completion of this tutorial, you should now have a working installation of Wagtail on your Windows 11 machine. You can now start customizing your Wagtail project and adding content to it.