Caktus Blog

Insights and strategies from a team recognized at Python and Django conferences worldwide since 2009. The Caktus Blog is your space for practical how-to’s, real-world solutions, and expert advice on building better user experiences, strengthening quality assurance, solving deep and complex Python/Django problems, and managing projects that deliver impact. Whether you’re refining a UI or prepping for launch, join us to learn, level up, and lead with confidence.

2025


Understanding Pricing in Custom Software Development

If you’re in the early stages of a software project and researching a technology partner, I can guess your top two questions:

How to Deploy Selectively to Production

Sometimes, it’s necessary to deploy a set of features and/or bug fixes to production before part of the current “testing” branch has been tested completely in a Q/A or staging environment.

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Deleting a Django Application from a Multi-Site Kubernetes Cluster

Recently, a client requested that we delete a website that was no longer used. The Kubernetes cluster was managed by an engineer who is no longer with the company, making the cluster feel like a concealed box. All I had was the website’s name. Since we use Ingress Nginx and Nginx as a web server, I figured the answer to my query could be found there. So I ran:

How to fix factory_boy post-generation deprecation warnings

We use factory_boy for bootstrapping test data on many Python and Django projects at Caktus. Recently, we encountered a deprecation warning on an older project that had been using factory_boy for some time:

2024


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Reflections on DjangoCon US 2024: Highlights, Takeaways, and Community Connections

DjangoCon 2024 was a resounding success for the community, with attendees from all over the world gathering to learn about the latest developments in Django and to connect with the Django community. Caktus was well-represented at the conference, with six of our team members attending. In this blog post, we share our experiences at DjangoCon 2024, including our favorite talks, the people we met, and the things we learned. We also offer some tips for future attendees on how to get the most out of DjangoCon.

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Getting Started with Dagster

Recently, Caktus has been using Tailscale to manage VPN connections between Android tablets and a central server. We wanted to report on the devices connected to the network using the Tailscale API. While we could use tools like Celery to fetch data from the API and load it into a database—given its widespread use in the Django ecosystem—we also wanted to explore other options.

2023


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Upgrading PostgreSQL From v11 to v15 in Your Django Application

In the ever-evolving world of data management, staying up-to-date with the latest technologies and best practices is imperative. One crucial aspect of this is ensuring your PostgreSQL version remains current. On November 9, 2023, PostgreSQL 11 reaches end of life (EOL).

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Migrating a Django Project from a GPU to a Convenience Image on CircleCI

Recently we learned that as of September 30th, 2023 several linux images will be deprecated, including the one we used, ubuntu-2004:202111-02. Therefore, after September 30th, our pipelines would have failed. To avoid this, we switched several machines in our Django project from Ubuntu GPU images to convenience images; This writing details that switch.

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Addressing the recent uptick in scam job offers on LinkedIn related to Caktus Group LLC.

James Worthan

Beginning on July 20th, many individuals contacted us asking if a job offer they had received from us was a legitimate offer, wanting to ensure that they were talking with the correct person at the company. The unfortunate truth was that none of the potential applicants seeking information had submitted an application with Caktus Group.

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Migrate to Amazon EKS Add-ons

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) released support for operational cluster add-on software, or Amazon EKS add-ons, around Kubernetes version 1.19 in May 2021. These include: