settings in apache for django app which need ssl for some pages

First of all, let's separate the concerns here: one thing is to require login, other is to require SSL. The former is specific to Django, and should be handled in your views; and for the latter, IMHO you should consider the possibiilty of serving everything through SSL, that would simplify your setup a lot. Sure, there's some overhead, and it's up to you to decide whether it matters or not for your particular case.

That said, for your proposed scenario:

1. To serve anything from plain HTTP, you need to listen to the port 80 (or, in your case, 8080). So you need a separate VirtualHost bound to that port, with a separate WSGI application for itself.

2. To allow a single path (your index file) from this virtual host, but require everything else to be served by the SSL protected one, you can use mod_rewrite:

   RewriteEngine OnRewriteRule ^/partlysecureapp$ - [L,NC]RewriteRule (.*) https://127.0.0.1/partlysecureapp%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

   The first rule tells Apache not to perform any redirect if the path is exactly like your root path; the second redirects everything else to https (which will be handled by your *:443 virtual host).

   (Note: you might want to serve /site_media without SSL as well)

3. Then you can simply add your WSGI alias; even if Django sends the user to a different page, Apache will ensure that page is served through SSL.

You final code would be something like:

<VirtualHost *:8080>    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost    DocumentRoot /home/dev/python/django/partlysecureapp    RewriteEngine On    RewriteRule ^/partlysecureapp$ - [L,NC]    RewriteRule ^/site_media - [L,NC]    RewriteRule (.*) https://127.0.0.1/partlysecureapp%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]    ...    WSGIScriptAlias /partlysecureapp /home/dev/python/django/partlysecureapp/partlysecureapp.wsgi    Alias /site_media/ /home/dev/python/django/partlysecureapp/media/</VirtualHost>

And your code for the SSL protected virtual host would be identical to the mysecureapp one (using partlysecureapp instead, of course; note also that you can have both apps running side-by-side, just pay attention to your MEDIA and STATIC paths).