 <p>From the install steps you've listed it sounds like you're missing a few steps.</p> <p>Definitely revisit the <a href="http://docs.haystacksearch.org/dev/tutorial.html" rel="nofollow">Haystack setup instructions</a> with a particular eye to looking at the Create a Search Site and Creating Indexes sections.</p> <p>The long and short is you seem to be missing an indexes file. Haystack registers a bunch of stuff from your indexes when it is first included, so that explains why you're getting errors from <code>haystack.__init__</code></p> <p>Add a file called 'search_indexes.py' to your application directory. This file contains a list of the indexes you want to generate for different models. A simple example would be:</p> <pre><code>from haystack.indexes import * from haystack import site from myapp.models import MyModel class MyModelIndex(SearchIndex): text = CharField(document=True, use_template=True) def prepare(self, obj): self.prepared_data = super(MyModelIndex, self).prepare(obj) self.prepared_data['text'] = obj.my_field site.register(MyModel, MyModelIndex) </code></pre> <p>This will add a free text search field called 'text' to your index. When you search for free text without a field to search specified, haystack will search this field by default. The property <code>my_field</code> from the model <code>MyModel</code> is added to this text field and is made searchable. This could, for example, be the name of the model or some appropriate text field. The example is a little naive, but it will do for now to help you get something up and running, and you can then read up a bit and expand it.</p> <p>The call <code>site.register</code> registers this index against the model <code>MyModel</code> so haystack can discover it.</p> <p>You'll also need a file called <code>search_sites.py</code> (Name as per your settings) in your project directory to point to the index files you've just made. Adding the following will make it look through your apps and auto-discover any indexes you've registered.</p> <pre><code>import haystack haystack.autodiscover() </code></pre>