I like for extra magical stuff to occur when I am in development/debug mode. One of those magical things is a a magic debug.css style sheet.

Django sets a debug variable when the following conditions are met:

django.core.context_processors.debug is listed under TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS and your IP address (127.0.0.1 if your using the standard development server) is listed under INTERNAL_IPS.

Then in your base.html just add something like this:

For my CSS I like to use the following:

As I am developing my site, if I feel that a block of content isn’t fully finished for whatever reason, I mark it with a class of incomplete. This results in a purple color (which I don’t use on my site), the purpler it is… the more incomplete the content.

It’s like eating that stuff that makes your teeth red if you haven’t brushed them enough. Once all the purple’s gone the site is ready for production.

Eventually we can use all these hooks into the template to implement a symfony-style debug bar… later.