The new Django code isn't just automatically loaded by the Apache(wsgi)/Gunicorn. You need to explicitly reload it. BTW on your dev server that reload happens a

The new Django code isn't just automatically loaded by the Apache(wsgi)/Gunicorn. You need to explicitly reload it. BTW on your dev server that reload happens automatically if code changes. You can probably configure your web server to reload automatically too. Although doing it automatically on production is dangerous, for eg. a migration might need to run before the code accessing the new fields runs.