FAQ: The admin

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I can't log in. When I enter a valid username and password, it just brings up the login page again, with no error messages.

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The login cookie isn't being set correctly, because the domain of the cookie

sent out by Django doesn't match the domain in your browser. Try these two

things:

    * Set the ``SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN`` setting in your admin config file

      to match your domain. For example, if you're going to

      "http://www.example.com/admin/" in your browser, in

      "myproject.settings" you should set ``SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN = 'www.example.com'``.

    * Some browsers (Firefox?) don't like to accept cookies from domains that

      don't have dots in them. If you're running the admin site on "localhost"

      or another domain that doesn't have a dot in it, try going to

      "localhost.localdomain" or "127.0.0.1". And set

      ``SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN`` accordingly.

I can't log in. When I enter a valid username and password, it brings up the login page again, with a "Please enter a correct username and password" error.

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If you're sure your username and password are correct, make sure your user

account has ``is_active`` and ``is_staff`` set to True. The admin site only

allows access to users with those two fields both set to True.

How can I prevent the cache middleware from caching the admin site?

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Set the :setting:`CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_ANONYMOUS_ONLY` setting to ``True``. See the

:doc:`cache documentation </topics/cache>` for more information.

How do I automatically set a field's value to the user who last edited the object in the admin?

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The :class:`~django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin` class provides customization hooks

that allow you to transform an object as it saved, using details from the

request. By extracting the current user from the request, and customizing the

:meth:`~django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.save_model` hook, you can update an

object to reflect the user that edited it. See :ref:`the documentation on

ModelAdmin methods <model-admin-methods>` for an example.

How do I limit admin access so that objects can only be edited by the users who created them?

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The :class:`~django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin` class also provides customization

hooks that allow you to control the visibility and editability of objects in the

admin. Using the same trick of extracting the user from the request, the

:meth:`~django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.queryset` and

:meth:`~django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.has_change_permission` can be used to

control the visibility and editability of objects in the admin.

My admin-site CSS and images showed up fine using the development server, but they're not displaying when using mod_python.

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See :ref:`serving the admin files <serving-the-admin-files>`

in the "How to use Django with mod_python" documentation.

My "list_filter" contains a ManyToManyField, but the filter doesn't display.

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Django won't bother displaying the filter for a ``ManyToManyField`` if there

are fewer than two related objects.

For example, if your ``list_filter`` includes ``sites``, and there's only one

site in your database, it won't display a "Site" filter. In that case,

filtering by site would be meaningless.

How can I customize the functionality of the admin interface?

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You've got several options. If you want to piggyback on top of an add/change

form that Django automatically generates, you can attach arbitrary JavaScript

modules to the page via the model's ``class Admin`` ``js`` parameter. That

parameter is a list of URLs, as strings, pointing to JavaScript modules that

will be included within the admin form via a ``<script>`` tag.

If you want more flexibility than simply tweaking the auto-generated forms,

feel free to write custom views for the admin. The admin is powered by Django

itself, and you can write custom views that hook into the authentication

system, check permissions and do whatever else they need to do.

If you want to customize the look-and-feel of the admin interface, read the

next question.

The dynamically-generated admin site is ugly! How can I change it?

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We like it, but if you don't agree, you can modify the admin site's

presentation by editing the CSS stylesheet and/or associated image files. The

site is built using semantic HTML and plenty of CSS hooks, so any changes you'd

like to make should be possible by editing the stylesheet. We've got a

:doc:`guide to the CSS used in the admin </obsolete/admin-css>` to get you started.