For a previous project, I was using Backbonejs alongside Django, but I found out that I didn't use many features from Django. So, I am looking for a lighter framework to use underneath a Backbonejs web app.

I never used Django built in templates. When I did, it was to set up the initial index page, but that's all.

I did use the user management system that Django provided.

I used the models.py, but never views.py.

I used urls.py to set up which template the user would hit upon visiting the site.

I noticed that the two features that I used most from Django was South and Tastypie, and they aren't even included with Django.

Particularly, django-tastypie made it easy for me to link up my frontend models to my backend models. It made it easy to JSONify my front end models and send them to Tastypie. Although, I found myself overriding a lot of tastypie's methods for GET, PUT, POST requests, so it became useless.

South made it easy to migrate new changes to the database. Although, I had so much trouble with South. Is there a framework with an easier way of handling database modifications than using South? When using South with multiple people, we had the worse time keeping our databases synced. When someone added a new table and pushed their migration to git, the other two people would spend days trying to use South's automatic migration, but it never worked. I liked how Rails had a manual way of migrating databases.

Even though I used Tastypie and South a lot, I found myself not actually liking them because I ended up overriding most Tastypie methods for each Resource, and I also had the worst trouble migrating new tables and columns with South. So, I would like a framework that makes that process easier. Part of my problem was that they are too "magical".

Which framework should I use? Nodejs or a lighter Python framework? Which works best with my above criteria?