Doing some trivial GeoDjango today.  All was pretty straightforward, though the tutorial didn't cover how to add PostGIS to an existing DB (you just run the same commands you'd use to create the template against the existing DB, but it needs to be as a DB superuser, so it won't go into a regular migration nicely). I wound up a bit lost trying to use the core GeoDjango admin until I logged into the #geodjango irc channel and the message of the day said "go look at olwidget"... oh, yeah, that's exactly what I needed... don't even need to post a question now.  I did wind up using a custom tile server (nothing special, just the MapQuest OSM dataset) but other than that out-of-box is pretty much okay.  I want users to enter GIS coordinates and plot them on a map... and it pretty much works. I'll need to customize so that the form also includes the ability to type in the coordinates, but that shouldn't be complex.