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Python Web Framework for Small Team [closed]

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I have 4 days off and I will use this time to rewrite our RoR (Ruby on Rails) Application in a python web framework just for fun ;-] (and why not make the switch, RoR is great but keep changing all the time, can be exhausting.)
I don't know the python web framework very well, I've glad web.py, django, cherry.py, pylons/pyramid and few others. Our requirements are (put everything can be irrelevant) :
MVC (Strict or not)
Small Team (2-3 people included one designer)
Fun to use
REST support
Multilevel caching (DB query, page cache)
Nginx Support (X-Accel-Redirect File Download)
Heavy traffic (1,200,000 ~ views)
Urls rewrting (Multi-domains support not only subdomain)
Not a problem if it's not hype
Not a problem if there is no plugins
Either SQL or NOSQL (can be fun to try NOSQL)
So what you would advise ?

I think most of the big frameworks will fit your requirements so maybe you might look at it from the perspective of the app you are writing. How much do you want to work "out of the box". Will you need user management? Will you need an admin panel etc.
I use Django and it's great when you don't want to rewrite a lot of boilerplate. It can be a bit tedious at times trying to bend it to do what you want, but once you get your head around it's intricacies , you can get things done very quickly.
With Django anyway:
MVC (Strict or not)
Not MVC, but similar > http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter05/#cn16
Small Team (2-3 people included one designer)
not sure how the framework will effect this, but yes, it's quick to develop on your own or with a team via version control
Fun to use
well there's a lot of great documentation, so less time is spent pulling your hair out, and you can get going very quickly which is nice
REST support
Yes, as a library: > https://bitbucket.org/jesperndjjango-piston/wiki/Home
Multilevel caching (DB query, page cache)
Yep > https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/cache/?from=olddocs
Nginx Support (X-Accel-Redirect File Download)
Again, not sure this is relevant, but yes. I use nginx with UWSGI and it's very quick
Heavy traffic (1,200,000 ~ views)
Yes > Does Django scale?
Urls rewriting (Multi-domains support not only subdomain)
Not sure about this
Not a problem if it's not hype
It's no node-js, but again, lots of really good documentation
Not a problem if there is no plugins
There are .... my god there are
Either SQL or NOSQL (can be fun to try NOSQL)
SQL out of the box, but NOSQL is supported > http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/projects/django-nonrel

In addition to the other frameworks mentioned (which are all good options), you should check out web2py. It's a feature-packed, full-stack framework that's very easy to set up, learn, and use. It was originally inspired by Ruby on Rails, so if you're rewriting an RoR application, you may find it more comfortable than some of the other Python frameworks. Here are some details regarding your requirements:
MVC:
http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/01#Model-View-Controller
REST support:
http://vimeo.com/21133657
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/web2py/gcqEcXIo7RI/I8BhkK0G_XUJ
Multilevel caching (DB query, page cache):
http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/04#cache
http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/06#Caching-Selects
Nginx Support:
http://code.google.com/p/web2py/source/browse/scripts/setup-web2py-nginx-uwsgi-ubuntu.sh
Urls rewriting:
http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/04#URL-Rewrite
Not a problem if there is no plugins
Plugin documentation
plugin_wiki
Plugins
More plugins
Appliances
Slices
Either SQL or NOSQL (can be fun to try NOSQL)
SQL support: SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, FireBird, DB2, Informix, Ingres, Cubrid.
NoSQL support: Google App Engine, CouchDB (partial), MongoDB (partial)
Easy to add additional database adapters (SQL or NoSQL).
The framework is under very active development (new releases every 2-4 weeks), yet is committed to maintaining backward compatibility, so existing apps won't break upon upgrade. If you have any questions, you'll get lots of help from the friendly and responsive mailing list.

I would recommend DJANGO or TurboGears.

I don't think you can go wrong with any of the major web frameworks. Personally I've used Django the most and would lean that way, the ORM is really great and it's philosophies/design are closely aligned with my own personal preference. However, if you wanted to go a different route, bottle is a really fun lightweight microframework, I've found it a pleasure to develop with. If you want to go the NoSQL route, MongoDB has great Python support. PyMongo is excellent (and the recommended way to use MongoDB from Python), MongoEngine is a nice little ORM (if you care for that sort of thing).

Of the frameworks you've mentioned, Django has the most momentum and is most likely to fit your ideals of a framework, coming from a Rails background. By this I mean it has helpers that allow you to generate your forms quickly, though no scaffolding. (In fact, Django's way is a little better than scaffolding in Rails because you can use all or just pieces of it)
It has a good ORM with lots of helper methods and, one of the best features, it has a fully functional admin interface once you define your models. You can start porting data even while the site is being developed.
It also provides excellent user support, including permissions, access control, groups, user profiles.
It's easy (and fun) to create your own middleware and context processors that let you abstract out often reused pieces as plugins to the framework.
The only feature Django doesn't have that you specified above is the NoSQL support. And this is only half true. If you want to use a non relational database for some parts of your app, such as session storage, you can. If you want to use it as your exclusive backend you'll lose some of Django's awesome features unless you patch Django with django-nonrel.
I've used turbo gears which is a combination of several of the other options you mentioned. That community has some great people in it but they're currently experiencing a major architecture revamp and honestly, they're just not getting as much developer attention as Django.

Python/GAE social network / cms?

After much research, I've come up with a list of what I think might be the best way of putting together a Python based social network/cms, but have some questions about how some of these components fit together.
Before I ask about the particular components, here are some of the key features of the site to be built:
a modern almost desktop-like gui
future ability to host an advanced html5 sub-application (ex.http://www.lucidchart.com)
high scalability both for functionality and user load
user ability to password protect and permission manage content on per item/group basis
typical social network features
ability to build a scaled down mobile version in the future
Here's the list of tools I'm considering using:
Google App Engine
Python
Django
Pinax
Pyjamas
wxPython
And the questions:
Google App Engine -- this is an attempt to cut to the chase as many pieces of the puzzle seem to be in place.
Question: Am I limiting my options with this choice? Example: datastore not being relational? Should I wait
for SQL support under the Business version?
Python -- I considered 'drupal' at first, but in the end decided that being dependent on modules that may or
may not exist tomorrow + limitations of its templating system are a no-no. Learning its API, too, would be useless elsewhere
whereas Python seems like a swiss army knife of languages -- good for almost anything.
Question: v.2.5.2 is required by GAE, but python.org recommends 2.5.5. Which do I install?
Django -- v.0.96 is built into GAE. You seem to be able to upgrade it.
Questions: Any reason not to upgrade to the latest version? Ways to get around the lack of HTML5 support?
Pinax (http://pinaxproject.com) Rides on top of Django and appears to provide most of the social network functionality
anyone would want.
Question: Reasons NOT to use it? Alternatives?
Pyjamas and wxPython -- this is the part that gets a little confusing. The basic idea behind these is the ability
to build a GUI. I've considered Silverlight and Flash, before the GAE/Python route, but a few working versions of
HTML5 apps convinced me that enough of it ALREADY runs on the latest batch of browsers to chose the HTML5/Javascript
route instead.
Question: How do I extend/supplement Python/Django to build an app-like HTML5 interface? Are Pyjamas and wxPython
the way to go? Or should I change my thinking completely?
Answers to some/any of these questions would be of great help. Please excuse my ignorance if any of this doesn't make much sense.
My last venture into web programming was a decent sized LAMP website some 5-6 years ago. On the desktop side of things,
my programming experience boils down to very high level scripting languages that I keep on learning to accomplish very specific
tasks :)

As someone who has deployed a Django site to GAE, I can tell you that you are not going to reach the ideal solution. Django on GAE misses some of the best aspects of Django because the ORM doesn't work right. The best compromise may be to use Django-nonrel to add the features back in.
This introduces it's own problems though: because of the large number of files and memory used by a Django app you're code will be unloaded from memory quickly after the app becomes idle. That means that visitors will frequently hit an approximately 6 second delay on the first page view after the site's code has been unloaded from memory while GAE uncompresses the zipped modules. Once your site is busy this won't be a problem, but while your site is still young and unknown it will cause the appearance of performance problems. :-(
Second, I've also worked for a company that built a custom CMS and can tell you that the first 80% is pretty easy, especially with modern frameworks. However, the rest can be quite challenging. For example, user roles and custom content types are two challenging aspects. Therefore strongly consider standing on the backs of giants and finding a CMS or CMS framework that almost perfectly meets your needs and then extend it to do that extra bit you need.
So, that said, answering your points:
Yes, you're limiting your options but that may be OK. Most developers are more comfortable with the relational model than the nosql model. Therefore more open source software is built with it in mind. Also, GAE is a closed source platform which is also a deterrent to open source developers. App Engine Oil is a CMS framework that may suit you well and is optimized for App Engine. Also look at web2py which has support for GAE.
I've found myself to be extremely productive with Python. I used to write a lot of PHP now I find it ugly. That said, think about the total line count of code you'll have to write. If you can make Drupal work with high quality pre-made modules you may find yourself only needing 1/10th of the code. By the way, the trick with Drupal is to mainly use only high quality modules. Look at the history, make sure not to use development versions. Try to contact the authors on IRC. I'm not saying you should use Drupal but it is possible to have a reliable site with it (for example, whitehouse.gov)
You're in the classic GAE/Django problem. If you use 0.96 you get great performance but you miss a lot of the great 1.0+ features and you don't get the ORM and all of it's benefits. If you use a newer version of Django you get the performance/memory problems mentioned above.
I'm about to investigate pinax for my company. I've done a very cursor glance at it. I don't know if it has good support for non relational model backends. You'll probably need to look at django-nonrel. However know that you're going to be investing in relatively untried solutions here. A small percentage of Django users use Pinax and an even smaller percentage, if any, use it on a nonrelational backend. Therefore you're going to be in the highly experimental scenario you mentioned in point 2 above.
I can't offer personal experience on it. I've investigated pyjamas a few times. However I like writing HTML CSS and JS. I like to have control. I like progressive enhancement and knowing what users will see if they don't have the full capabilities. Also, I think any new app that doesn't explicitly address mobile clients is implicitly shooting themself in the foot. As many as 15% of Internet users only use the Internet via their smart phone. What kind of experience will they get with pyjamas?
You didn't mention this, but one thing I consider when choosing a platform is vendor lockin and portability. If you develop your solution for GAE and find that you're not able to do what you want, will you be able to port it to another solution elsewhere? How much work will it take? If you code heavily for GAE or make commitments to its architecture, you're stuck with it or with rewriting to move. Using Django or Web2py can help mitigate this.
That said, the big benefit of Python GAE is that you get to be very productive, see your results instantly, get hosting for free while your site is small and get excellent scalability. These are not small things. There is great value there.

Python after Ruby on Rails [closed]

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I have been working with Ruby on Rails for over a year now and have been offered some development work with Python. I would like know if development with Python is as enjoyable as Ruby in terms of the clarity and ease of use. And how well is Python suited for Web development. I've heard of Pylons being a direct port of the Rails framework but does it provide the same level of comfort and features. Are there any popular websites built using Python and a framework that offers the same level of flexibilty as Rails.
Because Rails doesn't seem like work.

Django is one of the most famous. It follows a different approach to web devlopment then ruby does, but it is just as powerful and feature rich. An example website running Django is lawrence.com
Pylons is another popular one, I don't know why you heard it was a Rails clone, because it is not. It is a lightweight framework that leverages the power of other open-source projects to give you flexibility in implementation. For example, you can choose to use SQLAlchemy, SQLObject or CouchDB for managing your database. Or you can choose between Mako, Genshi, Jinja2, or whatever you like for your templates. I think you get the picture. Some example website running of pylons are: freebase and Charlie Rose
There exist other web framework as well, but they are less popular.
Notably, TurboGears, which is now built upon Pylons. I would say it tries to pack more juice then pylons does, but it also constrain you more as it assumes more decisions for you. Still, you can stay away from them and do as you please, but it starts with a more constrained framework.
The last one I will mention is Zope, which is the big commercially backed one, that has been there for a while now, but I don't have much experience with it. I do believe it is the less "fun" to work with, but that's just my feeling, you can check it out yourself.
All in all, it comes down to your workflow, I personally, do not enjoy Ruby as a language as much as I do Python and it is natural that I thus like to work with python for web development then Ruby. You really need to try them out yourself, at least the first two I mentioned, try to build a small website, just to get a feel for it. All I can say is from my experience, people either like Rails or Python, not both...
Good Luck!

One very good web development framework is Django

The main two frameworks in Python are Pylons (with the coaligned Turbogears framework) and the more popular Django. Django stomps everything for doing content-based sites (CMS etc) because the admin is excellent.
However, your question makes you sound very much enthused with Ruby and I doubt you'll find anything you like as much. It goes both ways: I'm pretty meh on Rails but really like Python and node.js.

I have done a lot of work with Python in the past year, mostly using Django. I enjoy it, and agree with others that it's great for content-heavy sites. Python and all of its frameworks very much follow the mantra of there being one correct way of doing things. I have learned that most of my pain extending Django lies in me approaching a problem wrongly and need to refactor the code. If you are a precise, logically-driven thinker, you'll enjoy Python a lot.
As far as websites that use Python for a code base, the biggest may be reddit and its family of sites. Django's website also lists sites that use it. I haven't had the privilege of using Pylons, but I also hear good things about it.

Clarity and ease of use are some of Pythons biggest selling points. In saying that, the different Python web frameworks cover almost the entire spectrum from small and simple all the way up to large and complex with everything in between.
You should find that most Python web frameworks have less 'magic' than Rails - ie they are a bit more explicit which is arguably better from the clarity point of view.
In my opinion, even if you enjoy Rails and don't ever plan on leaving, you should still try out other languages and frameworks occasionally to give you a broader perspective.
Personally I like Turbogears2, but I think Django would make a good starting point for a Rails developer that wanted to try out something else.

Drupal or Wordpress CMS as a Social Network? [closed]

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I am making a community for web-comic artist who will be able to sync their existing website to this site.
However, I am in debate for what CMS I should use: Drupal or Wordpress.
I have heard great things about Drupal, where it is really aimed for Social Networking. I actually got to play a little bit in the back end of Drupal and it seemed quite complicated to me, but I am not going to give up to fully understand how Drupal works.
As for Wordpress, I am very familiar with the Framework. I have the ability to extend it to do what I want, but I am hesitating because I think the framework is not built for communities (I think it may slow down in the future).
I also have a unrelated question as well: Should I go with a Python CMS?
I heard very great things about Python and how much better it is compare to PHP.
Your advice is appreciated.

Difficult decision. Normally I would say 'definitely Drupal' without hesitation, as Drupal was build as a System for community sites from the beginning, whereas Wordpress still shows its heritage as a blogging solution, at least that's what I hear quite often. But then I'm working with Drupal all the time recently and haven't had a closer look at Wordpress for quite a while.
That said, Drupal has grown into a pretty complex system over the years, so there is quite a learning curve for newcomers. Given that you are already familiar with Wordpress, it might be more efficient for you to go with that, provided it can do all that you need.
So I would recommend Drupal, but you should probably get some opinions from people experienced with Wordpress concerning the possibility to turn it into a community site first.
As for the Python vs. PHP CMS question, I'd say that the quality of a CMS is a function of the ability of its developers, the maturity of the system, the surrounding 'ecosystem', etc. and not of the particular language used to build it. (And discussions about the quality of one established language vs. another? Well - let's just not go there ;)

I make websites both using Drupal and Django - sometimes with Pinax (Python). So let me try to set up the differences between Python and PHP, and the different CMS's.
Python - PHP
Pros for Python.
You tend to write more readable code making it easier to maintain. This has a big impact if you are going to do a lot of custom coding, now or in the future. However if you aren't going to make that much custom functionality, this doesn't matters.
Python and Django is buildt on OO, making it easy to reuse code, and is built on the DRY princip.
I find, that python is more intuitive to program in. In many cases it has a less weird / obscure syntax than PHP.
Cons for Python.
PHP is easier to host. More providers will allow you to run PHP and you can generally find PHP hosters a bit more cheaper than python hosters. If you have your own server, this wont matter.
Generally it's easier to code with python in many regards, but this is something that can be overcome simply by using more time with PHP. Also if you don't know python, that means you will have to invest some time learning it, and the things you can do with python. On the other hand it's a bit more difficult to find cheap hosting for Python projects.
Django/Pinax vs Drupal vs Wordpress.
It's always difficult to be able to say, which CMS?CMF to use. Which to choose is dependent on several factors.
How much custom coding are you going to do?
How much customization do you need?
How fine grained control over the system do you want?
Wordpress' strength is it's ease of use, and how you quickly and easily can setup a lot of things. You might be able to get a site like what you want with only a few hours spent. The problem with wordpress however, is when you want to make custom functionality. It doesn't have a strong API like Drupal, and you might have problems changing the output to give you exactly what you want.
Drupal's great strength is it's powerfull API, ability to customize and overwrite anything. In addition to all this, it also has a lot of modules giving you the ability to in many cases build your most/all of your site in a very short time. The problem with Drupal is, that it's not easy to use. You have to spend time learning the system and API before you can take advantage of it. the Drupal AI is also hard to navigate for newcomers, and it takes a while before you learn where the different things are. Drupal is a big machine though, and it can get a bit slow, unless you setup something like Varnish in front of it.
Django is made for rapid development. So once you get into it, which isn't that hard, you can quickly create apps to suite your needs. You have complete control over the urls. The problem with django is that it's not so easy to find the different apps that has been made and figure out which are good. The template system makes it easy to make the markup like you want, but you can't change the functionality of the apps the same way you can with Drupal. One thing to note, is that Pinax doesn't have a 1.0 release yet, while Drupal is on code freeze for it's 7.0 release.
All in all, with all these tools, the biggest challenge is finding out how to use them. If you know wordpress very well and just want to make this one site, you can just use it and be done with it. If however you want to take it further, I would suggest that you use either Django or Drupal. These two has some great development potential.

If you're open to Python, and are building a social / community site, I would check out Pinax for the Django web framework. It provides a lot of common social site features like user accounts, blogging, tagging, friend invites, etc.
Here's an example of a social site built using Pinax.

There's a WordPress extension called BuddyPress that'll give you a ready-to-go social network. If it suits you, it may be an easier solution than a Drupal install. If it doesn't suit you, though, I find Drupal more suited to extending in the long run.

I'd do it Drupal as it's a proven social networking platform and has te ability to be upgraded to do just about anything, from the vast range of modules on offer (read up on cck and views- they basically let you add your own customised page type (cck) and views lets you show data in various different ways, and based on various other parameters.)
I run my own mini social network site in Drupal - Tunstall Communities - Bankeyfields,
Heres a social network/news site using Wordpress, which they've now opted to upgrade to Drupal, as they want more social networking features.

DrupalSN is a social network site designed for showing you how to build Drupal sites, and a lot of the Tutorials on there are focussed on user interaction, so it will be a great resource if you go with Drupal.

Framework/Language for new web 2.0 sites (2008 and 2009)

I know I'll get a thousand "Depends on what you're trying to do" answers, but seriously, there really is no solid information about this online yet. Here are my assumptions - I think they're similar for alot of people right now:
It is now October 2008. I want to start writing an application for January 2009. I am willing to use beta code and such but by January, I'd like a site that doesn't have 'strange' problems. With that said, if a language is simply 10% slower than another, I don't care about those things as long as the issue is linear. My main concern is developer productivity.
I'll be using Linux, Apache, MySQL for the application.
I want the power to do things like run scp and ftp client functions with stable libraries (I only picked those two because they're not web-related but at the same time represent pretty common network protocols that any larger app might use). Technologies like OpenID and Oauth will be used as well.
Experienced web developers are readily available (i.e. I don't have to find people from financial companies and such).
Whatever the choice is is common and will be around for a while.
Here's a kicker. I'd like to be able to use advanced presentation layer tools/languages similar to HAML, SASS. I definitively want to use JQuery.
I will be creating a Facebook app and at some point doing things like dealing with SMS messages, iPhone apps, etc...
At this point, the choices for language are PHP (Cake,Symfony,Zend), Python (Django), Ruby (Merb). I'm really between Django and Merb at this point mostly because everybody else seems to be going that way.
Please don't put any technologies in here that aren't made for mainstream. I know Merb is untested mostly, but their stated goal is a solid platform and it has alot of momentum behind it so I'm confident that it's workable. Please don't answer with how great Perl is or .Net.
For Future References - these choices were already made:
Debian (Lenny) - For converting CPU cycles into something useful. Trac
0.11 - For Project Management Gliffy - For wireframes and such
Google Docs/Apps - For documentation, hosted email, etc...
Amazon ec2/S3 - For hosting, storage.
Cheers,
Adam

Django!
Look up the DjangoCon talks on Google/Youtube - Especially "Reusable Apps" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-S0tqpPga4)
I've been using Django for some time, after starting with Ruby/Rails. I found the Django Community easier to get into (nicer), the language documented with excellent examples, and it's modularity is awesome, especially if you're wanting to throw custom components into the mix, and not be forced to use certain things here and there.
I'm sure there are probably ways to be just as flexible with Rails or some such, but I highly encourage you to take a long look at the Django introductions, etc, at http://www.djangoproject.com/
Eugene mentioned it's now at 1.0 - and therefore will remain a stable and backward-compatible codebase well through January 2009.
Also, the automatic admin interfaces it builds are production ready, and extremely flexible.

Sorry, but your question is wrong. People are probably going to vote me down for this one but I want to say it anyway:
I wouldn't expect to get an objective answer! Why? That's simple:
All Ruby advocates will tell to use Ruby.
All Python advocates will tell to use Python.
All PHP advocates will tell to use PHP.
Insert additional languages here.
Got the idea?
I recommend you to try each of the languages you mentioned for yourself. At least a few days each. Afterwards you should have a much better foundation to make your final decision.
That said, I would choose Ruby (because I am a Ruby advocate).

All of them will get the job done.
Use the one that you and your team are most familiar with
This will have a far greater impact on the delivery times and stability of your app than any of the other variables.

it depends.
php - symfony is a great framework. downsides: php, wordy and directory heavy. propel gets annoying to use. upsides: php is everywhere and labor is cheap. well done framework, and good support. lots of plugins to make your life easier
python - django is also a great framework. downsides: python programmers can be harder to find, django even harder. changing your db schema can be somewhat difficult since there are no official migrations. doesn't quite do mvc like you'd expect. upsides: does everything you need and has the great python std library and community behind it.
ruby - i've never used merb, so I'll address rails. upsides: there is a plugin, gem, or recipe for almost anything you could want to do. easy to use. downsides: those plugins, gems, and recipes sometimes fail to work in mysterious ways. monkey patching is often evil. the community is.. vocal. opinionated software, and sometimes those opinions are wrong (lack of foreign keys). rails itself seems like a tower of cards waiting to explode and take hours of your life away.
with all of that said, I'm a freelance php/symfony and ruby/rails developer. I've worked on several projects in both languages and frameworks. My latest project is in Rails solely because of ActiveMerchant. I've been looking for a reason to develop a django app for a while. If there were an ActiveMerchant like library for django, I probably would have used it.

I would go with Django, if you are comfortable with a Python solution. It's at version 1.0 now, and is maturing nicely, with a large user base and many contributors. Integrating jQuery is no problem, and I've done it without any issues.
The only thing is, as far as I can tell, Ruby is much more popular for web development nowadays, so it's easier to find Ruby developers. I get this impression from browsing recent job advertisements - there aren't that many for Python or Django. I don't know much about Merb, so I can't give a fair comparison.
I've done enough PHP to not recommend starting a new project with it.

Based in your reasons, I would go with Ruby. I see that you want some administration tools (scp, ftp client) and Ruby has it (net/sftp and net/ftp libraries).
Also, there are great gems like God for monitoring your system, Vlad the Deployer for deploying, etc. And a lot of alternatives in Merb's field, just use whatever you find it's better for your needs (Thin, Mongrel, ebb, etc).

To get a feeling of where the Django ecosystem is at currently, you might want to check out
djangopeople.net (try djangopeople.net/us/ny for New York state)
djangogigs.com

I have to preface this with my agreeing with Orion Edwards, choose the one your team is most familiar with.
However, I also have to note the curious lack of ASP.NET languages in your list. Not to provoke the great zealot army, but where's the beef? .NET is a stable, rapid development platform and the labor pool is growing daily. VB.NET and C# are transportable skill sets, and that can mean a lot when you're building a team of developers to work on a diverse set of tasks. .NET also allows you to separate your presentation layer from your backend code, like other languages, but also allows you to expose that backend code as web service for things like your iPhone and Facebook applications.
Take every suggestion with a grain of salt, and pick what suits the application best. Do your research, and design for function and not the zealots.
Disclaimer: Once a PHP, ColdFusion and Perl developer. Flex zealot, and Adobe lover. Now writing enterprise .NET applications. ;)
Don't forget Mono, which will let you run .NET under *nix. Not that I'm saying it will be perfect, just playing devil's advocate.

Don't get stuck in the mindset of server-side page layout. Consider technologies like SproutCore, GWT or ExtJS which put the layouting code fully on the client, making the server responsible only for data marshalling and processing (and easily replaced).
And you really, really need to know which server platform you want. Don't pick one because it's the flavor of the month, pick one because you're comfortable with it. Flavors don't last, a solidly built codebase will.

Having built apps in Django, I can attest to its utility. If only all frameworks were as elegant (yes Spring, I'm looking at you).
However in terms of betting the farm on Django, one thing you need to factor in is that Python 3 will be released shortly. Python 3 is not backwards compatible and there's a risk that it will fork the language and end up slowing momentum for all Python projects while they deal with the fallout. To be fair, Ruby 2.0 is due soon too, but I don't think it will be as disruptive.

My experience with various new technologies over the last ten years leads me to recommend that you make stability of the platform a serious criterion. It's all well and good developing with the latest and greatest framework, but when you find it's moved forward a point version and suddenly the way you have done everything is deprecated, that can turn out to result in extra unnecessary work. This was particularly my experience working with rails a little ahead of version 1. For that reason alone I would avoid any platform that wasn't at least at 1.0 when you start work on it.
Ruby is great to work with and will keep your developer productivity high, but if Django is the more stable platform I would favour that for sure.

It pays not to be biased about your server setup. Any modern web framework worth it's weight in source code has a SQL abstraction layer of some sort. PostgreSQL gets much better performance, and this is coming from a former MySQL partisan.
Apache is a beast, both to configure and on your server's resources. Why not go with something light-weight, like nginx or lighttpd?
(For the record, I'm a big Django user, but as the accepted answer said, go with whatever your team knows. Quick turn-arounds are not the time to be learning new frameworks. If you're hiring a team from scratch, go with Django.)

Update: I ended up using, and loving, Django. I'm totally done with PHP - sorry about that. Future readers trying to create a new web 2.0 site (assuming they have a programming background), should greatly consider this setup:
Amazon ec2 for hosting ($80/month - not cheap but worth it if you can afford it)
Django/Python (Python is the most powerful scripting language on the planet - and Django just makes it work on the web)
Development should be done with SQLlite and the development server that comes with Django. Don't waste time with Nginx, Apache, MySQL until you're withing a few weeks of a beta.
Oh, and I now develop on a Mac, which works great for local Django development.
Finally, Pinax is a great start for Django development.