upgrade to django 1.6, fixed quite a few deprecated usage and other things:
1. dealing with deprecation
from django.utils.hashcompat import md5_constructor
=>
import hashlib and use hashlib.md5

from django.contrib.localflavor.us.models import PhoneNumberField
=>
from localflavor.us.models import PhoneNumberField

    'django.contrib.markup’,
=>
    'markup_deprecated’,

    host = get_host(request)
=>
    host = request.get_host()

from django.conf.urls.defaults import url, patterns, include
=>
from django.conf.urls import url, patterns, include

{% url home %}
=>
{% url ‘home’ %}

import simplejson as json
=>
import json

direct_to_template
==>
 TemplateView.as_view

2. upgrade packages and add new ones:
Django==1.6
South==0.8.4
celery==3.1.5
django-nose==1.2
django-extensions==1.2.5

django-localflavor==1.0
django-markup-deprecated=0.0.2

3. south migration issues

add:
from south.modelsinspector import add_introspection_rules
add_introspection_rules([], ["^localflavor\.us\.models\.PhoneNumberField"])

4. request transaction mode:
DATABASES['default']['ATOMIC_REQUESTS'] = True

5. simplejson is not longer used for internal serialization. python json is used instead. it breaks out code where a django form is serialized in session. have to re-implement the passing form in session.

6. re-initialize south migrations to start from a clean slate

7. fixed couples of pylint errors