This is how I setup GeoDjango development environment on a clean install of Ubuntu.
A good place to start would be to take a quick look at the docs but don’t spend to much there. Just follow on 
Hopefully you already have Django setup on your machine. If not you’ll have to do so and can follow my Django setup guide here
In a nutshell we will:
- Install a Geospatial Library (PostGIS)
- Setup a Geospatial database template (Using a script)
- Create a database to test
First step is to install a Geospatial Library. We will use PostGIS.
Run the following line in your terminal.
sudo apt-get install binutils gdal-bin libproj-dev postgresql-9.1-postgis postgresql-server-dev-9.1 python-psycopg2
Now we have installed PostGIS we need to setup a template database. This is where I started getting confused following the GeoDjango setup guide.
Next lets enter the postgres user shell like this:
sudo su postgres
In your web browser go download create_template_postgis-debian.sh
(I had to then go to the script >> right click on it >> Properties >> Permissions >> And tick ’Allow executing as program’ )
Now cd to the location where you have stored the script for example:
cd ~/Downloads
and execute the script
./create_template_postgis-debian.sh
You’ll see a lot happening on the scree. This is normal.
If everything has gone OK up until now then we should be able to create a new database using the spatial db template the script created for us.
Let us try that then. Type in:
createdb -T template_postgis geodjango
If it worked then the terminal should just go to the next line without saying anything. Let us confirm by listing the databases. You can open Pgadmin3 to see if your database is listed there or you can type in:
psql -l
If you see ‘geodjango’ database there then all is well and you have finished setting up GeoDjango on your Ubuntu machine.
Extra Information
*You can call your databases anything you want but you will have to create them this way if you want to have the geodjango functionality.
*To create your DB with a GUI like pgadmin just open your pgadmin3 and create a DB like you normally would. But before you click OK on the New Database form make sure to first click on the Definition tab. Here you must select the correct template to base your DB on which will be tempalte_postgis.
You might run into this error An error has occurred:
ERROR: source database “template_postgis” is being accessed by other users
DETAIL: There are 1 other session(s) using the database.
This is because your template is connected in pgadmin3. All you need to do is right click on the template_postgis db in your DB list on the left and click disconnect.
*Add django.contrib.gis to INSTALLED_APPS
Like other Django contrib applications, you will only need to add django.contrib.gis to INSTALLED_APPS in your settings. This is the so that gis templates can be located — if not done, then features such as the geographic admin or KML sitemaps will not function properly.
From this point onwards you should be able to run through the geodjango tutorial as your spatial database has been setup.
