Background

I have a django server that uses django-allauth for handling authentication logic. I want to unregister Sites framework from django-admin, in other words, I do not want to see the Sites section inside django-admin:

What I tried

Normally, I would do one of the two things:

1. Unplug django.contrib.sites from INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py
2. Unregister Sites model from within one of my admin.py files like so: admin.site.unregister(Sites)

The problem

I tried doing both options above. Here is the error when I unplug Sites app from INSTALLED_APPS:

...
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\allauth\utils.py", line 13, in <module>
    from django.contrib.sites.models import Site
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\sites\models.py", line 78, in <module>
    class Site(models.Model):
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\db\models\base.py", line 113, in __new__
    raise RuntimeError(
RuntimeError: Model class django.contrib.sites.models.Site doesn't declare an explicit app_label and isn't in an application in INSTALLED_APPS.

django-allauth is clearly using it in line 13.

Here is the error when I do admin.sites.unregister(Site):

Exception in thread django-main-thread:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Python39\lib\threading.py", line 973, in _bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "C:\Program Files\Python39\lib\threading.py", line 910, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\autoreload.py", line 64, in wrapper
    fn(*args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\commands\runserver.py", line 110, in inner_run
    autoreload.raise_last_exception()
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\autoreload.py", line 87, in raise_last_exception
    raise _exception[1]
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 375, in execute
    autoreload.check_errors(django.setup)()
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\autoreload.py", line 64, in wrapper
    fn(*args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\__init__.py", line 24, in setup
    apps.populate(settings.INSTALLED_APPS)
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\apps\registry.py", line 122, in populate
    app_config.ready()
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\apps.py", line 27, in ready
    self.module.autodiscover()
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\__init__.py", line 24, in autodiscover
    autodiscover_modules('admin', register_to=site)
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\utils\module_loading.py", line 47, in autodiscover_modules
    import_module('%s.%s' % (app_config.name, module_to_search))
  File "C:\Program Files\Python39\lib\importlib\__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1030, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1007, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 986, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 680, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 850, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 228, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\accounts\admin.py", line 94, in <module>
    admin.site.unregister(Site)
  File "C:\path-to-my-project\venv\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\sites.py", line 153, in unregister
    raise NotRegistered('The model %s is not registered' % model.__name__)
django.contrib.admin.sites.NotRegistered: The model Site is not registered

The issue is django-allauth requires the Sites framework in order to work properly. Here is the official explanation:

settings.py (Important - Please note ‘django.contrib.sites’ is required as INSTALLED_APPS):

What I want

All I want is to hide the sites section from django-admin, as I have no use for it. I do not want to unplug or unregister, because I want django-allauth's functionality intact. How do I achieve this? What am I missing?

Steps to reproduce the error

1. Create a Django project with django-allauth installed
2. Create a superuser and log into Django admin
3. Try to hide the sites framework from Django admin

One approach is to unregister the Site admin on one of your AppConfig.ready() functions like this:

from django.apps import AppConfig


class SomeAppConfig(AppConfig):
    # ...

    def ready(self):
        from django.contrib import admin
        from django.contrib.sites.models import Site
        admin.site.unregister(Site)

The error happens because doing the unregister on one of your admin.py will not guarantee that the register for the django.contrib.sites has already finished. Doing this in a ready() function will work because all apps are already registered along with their admins.