A no-fluff deployment runbook for getting a Cookiecutter Django project live on DigitalOcean using Docker and Traefik. Covers the full path from droplet provisioning to a working production deployment with SSL, plus the gotchas I keep hitting. Pre-flight Checklist Before touching the droplet, confirm: Cookiecutter Django project generated locally with production = Docker , Traefik (or Nginx), Postgres , and your email backend of choice (Mailgun, SendGrid, Anymail, etc.) Project pushed to a private GitHub repo Domain registered with DNS access DigitalOcean account ready Local SSH keypair ( ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 ) ready All .envs/.production/* files prepared locally (these are git-ignored and must be transferred separately) Required env files: .envs/.production/.django .envs/.production/.postgres Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Generate strong values for DJANGO_SECRET_KEY , DJANGO_ADMIN_URL , POSTGRES_PASSWORD , etc: python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(64))" Enter fullscreen mode Exit…