diff --git a/crawler/wpull_plugin.py b/crawler/wpull_plugin.py
index 171bc61..a7ae1cc 100644
--- a/crawler/wpull_plugin.py
+++ b/crawler/wpull_plugin.py
@@ -70,9 +70,19 @@ def deactivate(self):
     def init_db(self):
         db_alias = "crawler"
 
+        # Django doesn't easily support dynamically adding an additional
+        # database once settings have been initialized. We have to manually
+        # define certain database options that are typically initialized
+        # with defaults by Django:
+        # https://github.com/django/django/blob/4d32ebcd57340aa8de2d6d31613f1646dc6391f6/django/db/utils.py#L159
         connections.databases[db_alias] = {
             "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3",
             "NAME": self.db_filename,
+            "AUTOCOMMIT": True,
+            "CONN_HEALTH_CHECKS": False,
+            "CONN_MAX_AGE": 0,
+            "OPTIONS": {},
+            "TIME_ZONE": None,
         }
 
         call_command("migrate", database=db_alias, app_label="crawler", run_syncdb=True)
diff --git a/requirements/base.txt b/requirements/base.txt
index 43b4ead..196ab4f 100644
--- a/requirements/base.txt
+++ b/requirements/base.txt
@@ -1,14 +1,14 @@
-beautifulsoup4==4.12.2
-click==8.0.4
-cssselect==1.1.0
-Django==3.2.25
-django-click==2.3.0
-django-debug-toolbar==3.2.4
-django-filter==21.1
-django-modelcluster==5.3
-djangorestframework==3.15.1
-djangorestframework-csv==2.1.1
-whitenoise==5.3.0
+beautifulsoup4==4.12.3
+click==8.1.7
+cssselect==1.2.0
+Django==4.2.15
+django-click==2.4.0
+django-debug-toolbar==4.4.6
+django-filter==24.3
+django-modelcluster==6.3
+djangorestframework==3.15.2
+djangorestframework-csv==3.0.0
+whitenoise==6.7.0
 
 # Ensure libxml2 is loaded dynamically; see
 # https://html5-parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#unix
diff --git a/requirements/gunicorn.txt b/requirements/gunicorn.txt
index 9d41f26..4afe40e 100644
--- a/requirements/gunicorn.txt
+++ b/requirements/gunicorn.txt
@@ -1 +1 @@
-gunicorn==20.1.0
+gunicorn==23.0.0
diff --git a/requirements/test.txt b/requirements/test.txt
index 723f534..82e4c7f 100644
--- a/requirements/test.txt
+++ b/requirements/test.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
 black
-coverage==6.4.3
+coverage==7.6.1