one thing that I do a little differently is the template dirs

I just do a standard

    TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
        os.path.join(
            PROJECT_ROOT,
            "templates",
        ),
    )

for the template dirs and the I symlink in template directorys of apps in the project. This allows me to do any additional template wackiness(like adding another directory in the path outside the project) with a symlink rather then modifying the settings file