Heroku is the first of the Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers that this chapter will cover. PaaS is a service given to web developers that allows them to host their websites on a platform that is controlled and maintained by someone else. At the cost of freedom, you gain assurances that your website will automatically scale with the number of users your site has with no extra work on your part. Using PaaS also tends to be more expensive than running your own servers.

Heroku is PaaS that aims to be easy to use for web developers by hooking into already existing tools and not requiring any large changes in the app. Heroku works by reading the file named Procfile, which contains commands that your Heroku dyno basically a virtual machine sitting on a server, will run. Before we begin, you will need a Heroku account. If you wish to just experiment, there is a free account available.

In a new file named Procfile in the root of the directory, add the following:

web: uwsgi uwsgi...