Noob questions - getting started

[Anton Melser]

Hi,

I am still very new to django and python and I'm looking for some examples to get me started and have some noob questions (I've never mapped anything)...

I have an app that is still just starting, and I have Events that I want to put a location on. To start with, I would like for admins to be able to enter an address or pick a spot on a map (and have it make a lookup that could be modified), and then to show a basic map to end-users with pin showing the position with popup address. Is olwidget a good base for this? Does anyone know of any simple examples doing this?

Also, will everything (or pretty much) that does this need postgis? I'm using postgres, so it's not a biggie but this appears to mean changing the db engine. Am I correct in assuming that this driver is just a layer on psycopg2 and doesn't break anything or reduce performance? If I do need it - is it better to start again with a fresh db (that's not a problem)?

It appears I can just use external services for getting the maps and doing the address lookups (like nominatim) - are there any good reasons to host this myself, particularly when my project is just getting started? If this is the case though, I'm a little unclear why I need anything spatial in the db...

Thanks!

Anton