# Can I delete common.py?

**URL:** <https://community.taiga.io/t/can-i-delete-common-py/8602>\
**Category:** Self hosted Taiga\
**Created:** [November 14, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://community.taiga.io/t/can-i-delete-common-py/8602 "2025-11-14T11:50:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![NathanC](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.taiga.io/nathanc/32/5381_2.png) [@NathanC](https://community.taiga.io/u/NathanC)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://community.taiga.io/t/can-i-delete-common-py/8602/1 "2025-11-14T11:50:40Z")

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Hello,

I’m in the process of installing Taiga from the full source code (front to generate themes and front-dist otherwise but it doesn’t matter for our topic).

In taiga-back, I modified config.py as written in the production installation guide.

Seeing that common.py wasn’t used and configured a lot of things I didn’t want (like a default admin user and other placeholder parameters), I deleted it. But several files still try to import it and crash my backend because of it.

I don’t want this common.py file to do anything, but when I just create an empty common.py file nothing changes, it still crashes.

So what do I do ?

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**Author:** ![Charlie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Charlie](https://community.taiga.io/u/Charlie)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2025, 1:25pm UTC](https://community.taiga.io/t/can-i-delete-common-py/8602/2 "2025-11-14T13:25:45Z")

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Hi there,

It is used, by config.py. The first thing that `config.py` does is import everything from the `common.py` file.

It’s a common Django pattern. You have a `common.py`, `base.py` or similar, where you have all the required defaults and settings required by Django, then you overwrite whichever settings you need to change in a different file, in this case `config.py`

`common.py` is not configuring a default admin user. It is setting a default variable `ADMIN_USERS`which is used throughout the code, for things like administrative emails, etc. If you set `ADMIN_USERS` in your `config.py`, you are then overwriting the value of that variable with whatever you are setting it to.

Same thing with all the other settings in `common.py`

Best!