Django Error: "mysqlclient 1.3.13 or newer is required; you have 0.9.3."

If you are a Django developer who uses MySQL in their project, you may encounter this error message when attempting to run your website:

raise ImproperlyConfigured('mysqlclient 1.3.13 or newer is required; you have %s.' % Database.__version__)
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: mysqlclient 1.3.13 or newer is required; you have 0.9.3.

This error occurs because the version of the mysqlclient library installed in your project is too old. This library is required for Django to communicate with your MySQL database, and newer versions have bug fixes and performance improvements.

To fix this issue, you can upgrade your mysqlclient library to version 1.3.13 or newer. You can do this using pip, the Python package manager, by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install mysqlclient==1.3.13

Alternatively, you can update your project's requirements in your requirements.txt file to include the newer version:

mysqlclient>=1.3.13

After updating your mysqlclient library, you should be able to run your Django website without encountering this error.