Forem: Ashish

How to Setup your First Django Project | The Best and Simplest Way

Ashish — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 21:19:35 +0000

While starting with learning Django, its very crucial to know what should be the best and the simplest way to setup your Django project.

Python's django framework is not something like the usual HTML, CSS and JavaScript project which you only deals with a few files, even the simples django project includes various files such as views.py, urls.py, models.py, settings.py, forms.py then the various folders such as staticfiles, templates which themselves includes various files. Its becomes even more complicated when you are working on a big django project.

This clearly explains Why there is a need to setup and manage django projects properly. In this tutorial today I will be sharing my way to setup the django project from creating the new django project to launching it on localhost. If you wan to know How to Deploy your Django Project Online for Free then I have also posted the website I use the most to host my django projects.

You can also get my FREE eBook related to A Comprehensive Guide to Setting Up Django Projects

Best way to setup a Django project

General Steps

To start with lets create a folder say django-setup, in this folder we will have our project setup.
Now open this folder in the code editor of your choice, here I will be using VS Code.

Creating virtual environment

Now we will setup a virtual environment t work with.

Install virtualenv using the command below in your terminal.

pip install virtualenv

Once the library is installed, now lets go back to the step 2 where we opened the folder in vs code, in terminal type the command below to create a virtual environment.

py -m venv venv

Instead of venv you can name your environment anything such as

py -m venv django-venv

Activating virtual environment

Once the virtual environment is created, we will now activate the environment. To activate the virtual environment in your terminal type

cd venv\scripts ; ./activate

This will activate the virtual environment and we are ready to work.

Installing Django

Now install Django by typing the command below in the terminal.

pip install django

Creating django project

We are all set to start creating and working with our django project.

To create django project type the command below in the terminal

django-admin startproject <project name>

Note: Make sure to replace <project name> with your desired project name.

Creating django app

Now head over and open the project folder using cd command and run the command below to create django app.

py manage.py startapp <app name>

Note: Make sure to replace <app name> with your desired app name.

Creating static folder

In the project's root directory now create a new folder named static which will include all the static files such as stylesheets, javascript files, image files and so on.

In the static folder now create three different folders named css, js, img.

Creating templates folder

In the project's root directory now create a new folder named templates which will include all the HTML pages such as base.html, index.html, about.html, contact.html and so on.

In the static folder now create your desired HTML pages like base.html, index.html, about.html, contact.html.

Updating settings.py

Now we will make some changes to settings.py file which is present in your project folder.

Import the os module a the top of settings.py file as shown in the image below.

import os

Add your app to the installed apps as shown below

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'new_app'
]

Add os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates' to TEMPLATES as shown below

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Right below STATIC_URL = 'static/' add the given code

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
]

With this step we have completed to update the settings.py file, now lets move on to the further steps.

Updating urls.py file present in the project folder

Now open the urls.py file located in the django project folder and replace the code with the code given below

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include('<your_app_name>.urls')),
]

Note: Make sure to replace <your_app_name> with your actual app name.

Creating urls.py file in app folder

Create a new file named urls.py in your app folder and add the code below.

from django.urls import path
from <your_app_name> import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='home'),
    path('about/', views.about, name='about'),
    path('contact/', views.contact, name='contact'),
]

Here we have added three pages, index.html, about.html and contact.html, you can add more pages as required by your project.

Note: Again make sure to replace <your_app_name> with your actual app name.

Creating HTML pages

Remember we created pages like base.html, index.html, about.html, contact.html in template folder, now we will ad html code to the pages.

base.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>{% block title %}{% endblock title %} - Django Setup</title>
</head>
<body>

    <header>
        <!-- Navigation bar code goes here -->
    </header>

    <main>
        {% block content %}{% endblock content %}
    </main>

    <aside>
        <!-- Sidebar code goes here -->
    </aside>

    <footer>
        <!-- Footer code goes here -->
    </footer>

</body>
</html>

index.html

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% load static %}

{% block title %}Home{% endblock title %}

{% block content %}
<h1>Home page</h1>
{% endblock content %}

about.html

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% load static %}

{% block title %}About{% endblock title %}

{% block content %}
<h1>About page</h1>
{% endblock content %}

contact.html

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% load static %}

{% block title %}Contact{% endblock title %}

{% block content %}
<h1>Contact page</h1>
{% endblock content %}

Creating views function for each page

Now we will create python functions for each page to render it in our browser.

In your app folder open views.py file and add the code below

from django.shortcuts import render

# Home page
def index(request):
    return render(request, 'index.html', {})

# About page
def about(request):
    return render(request, 'about.html', {})

# Contact page
def contact(request):
    return render(request, 'contact.html', {})

Migrations

Now we have to make migration, for that type the following code in your terminal one by one.

py manage.py makemigrations

py manage.py migrate

Creating super-user for the project

Create a super user to access the project's dashboard using the command below, type it in your terminal.

python manage.py createsuperuser

This command will prompt you some things such as name, email, password. Input those appropriately and hit enter.

Now we are all set. This is the simplest way to create and setup a django project. Now you can take this simple project further by adding more pages, urls, functions and so on.

Conclusion

In this post I tried to breakdown each set to setup a django project in the simplest way. I hope this will help you. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comment box if I missed something.

Get my FREE eBook: A Comprehensive Guide to Setting Up Django Projects.
Starter Django Project: Download the Starter Django Project.

GitHub: https://github.com/ashish-makes
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashish-makes/

Check out this Open Source Django-Tailwind Developer Portfolio and Blog in 2024!

Ashish — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 22:44:46 +0000

When exploring job opportunities, especially in technical fields like software engineering or web development, having a portfolio website is crucial. It serves as a centralized platform to showcase your work to the world.

We're thrilled to present our latest open-source project, the "Django-Tailwind Blog." Beyond being a traditional portfolio, it also functions as a blog where you can share your content with your community.

Django Tailwind Blog

"Django Tailwind Blog" is a developer blog and portfolio website built using Django and Tailwind CSS. It includes several pages such as Home, About, Contact, Blog, Projects, Categories, and custom 404 pages. The project features a clean and modern design that is fully responsive and optimized for performance. It includes a powerful admin interface for managing the content, and is easy to customize and deploy to a production environment.

Technologies used

Python (Django)
HTML
Tailwind CSS
JavaScript
TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor

Features

Responsive design using Tailwind CSS
Separate Blog and Projects page
Admin dashboard for managing blog posts and portfolio items
Contact form for sending messages to the site owner

We have used TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor to create the form to write articles which provides various options such as insert tables, images, link, comment, code. Furthermore it also provides various text formatting tools such as bold, italics, underline, various heading sizes, font styles and much more.

Below are some project screenshots

About Page

Contact Page

Custom 404 Page

We hope you enjoy this project. Feel free to contribute and help make this open-source project even more awesome!

How to Use ChatGPT4 for Free

Ashish — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 13:12:16 +0000

AI has taken over the internet. A new AI website is amazing people every week. One similar AI Language Model has broadened up the possibilities what AI can do and what we humans can achieve using the power of AI. I'm talking about GPT4. Since the launch of Chat GPT, we have used it in our various tasks without any limitations as it was free. However GPT4 is only usable through paid subscription.

This post will explain How to Use GPT4 for Free. Yes, you heard it right, you can use GPT4 for Free. I will mention two ways through which you can use GPT4 for Free.

GPT4 for Free

The First Way

The first way to use ChatGPT4 is Hugging Face. On huggingface.co there is a project where a users can char with a chatbot using chatgpt4 api. To use ChatGPT4 for Free you can follow the steps mentioned below.

Visit this ChatGPT4 link on huggingface.
Enter your prompt in input box and click on Run button.
You can see the result from ChatGPT4 Bot in the Chatbot section.

That's it, with the above steps you can use ChatGPT4 without ChatGPT Plus subscription.

One thing to note is that you will not always get result from chatbot because of excess usage by other people. However you can also duplicate the space and use Chatgpt4 by your Openai API key.
The steps for the same is below.

Create your Own ChatGPT4 Bot on HuggingFace

Visit the ChatGPT4 bot page on huggingface.
Now click on Duplicate Space ( Duplicate the Space and run securely with your OpenAI API Key )
Now change the visibility to public and click Duplicate Button.
Now click on Settings and scroll below to Repository secrets, click on New secret.
Add your OPENAI_API_KEY in the field.
Your ChatGPT4 Chatbot is ready to use for free, to use it click on App tab and start asking the questions to the bot.

The Second Way

Second way to use ChatGPT4 for Free is to use it on Poe website. This website provides one ChatGPT4 prompt for Free per day. You can use use it again by using different account for each prompt.
To use ChatGPT4 for Free follow the steps below.

Head over to Poe ChatGPT4 website.
Now signup to create a new account.
Once your account it ready, you have access to five AI chatbots including ChatGPT4 with limited access that is one usage per day. Other AI bots are Sage, Claude, Claude+, ChatGPT, GPT4, Dragonfly.
Just click in GPT4 and use you one prompt.

This is how you can use ChatGPT 4 for Free in 2023.

Conclusion

Currently these two websites allows us to Use ChatGPT 4 for Free, Although both of them have some disadvantages, however users can still experience the power of GPT4 for Free.

How to Deploy Django Website for Free in 2023

Ashish — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 06:21:08 +0000

You created your Django website and now want to see it in action online? Don't worry, this post will explain in detail that How to Deploy Django Website for Free in 2023. Although there are many websites available online to host django website for free, however this post will cover the website I use the most to deploy my django projects regularly.

Introduction

Knowing how to deploy websites online is one of the crucial skill to learn during your web development journey. Deploying a Django Website is important as it allows users to access the website. Without deployment the website remains confined to the developer's local machine and is of no use to others.

In this tutorial I will share the steps to deploy your django website for free on Railway which is my favorite website to host django websites for free.

What is Railway?

Railway is a cloud-based platform that allows you to set up infrastructure, develop your app using that infrastructure on your local machine, and then deploy your app to the cloud. Railway app makes it extremely easy to host your projects online by importing projects straight from GitHub. In addition, Railway provides fast hosting for users' projects online. Railway provides 500 hours of deployment each month for free in its Starter Plan which can be used to host your personal django projects.

Railway Features

Railway provides various features such as Automagic Builds, Multiple Environments, Deployment Rollbacks and so on.

Automatic Builds: Each time user pushes the code to GitHub, railway will automatically detect the changes and will build the project to deploy it.
Multiple Environments: Users can easily evolve their app overtime with the help of with fork joinable environments.
Deployment Rollbacks: In case the change made to the app has a bug or the user don't like the change, for that case railway supports one-click, instant rollbacks for every change.

How to Deploy Django Website for Free in 2023

Moving forward to host django website for free on Railway, first you need a working django project. In case you do not have any, feel free to fork one from my GitHub repos.

To Deploy Django Website for Free in 2023 follow the steps mentioned below:

Firstly install a python library named gunicorn with the following command.



pip install gunicorn

In next step, once your project is ready to deploy, create a file named Procfile without any extension in the root directory of the project. Add the following code in the file.



web: gunicorn project.wsgi

Note: Make sure to change project.wsgi to yourprojectname.wsgi

Now create a file named requirements.txt which contains all the modules required for the project to run. In the root directory of the file run the following command using terminal.



pip freeze > requirements.txt

The next step is to manage the static files during the production. To server static files during production we will use another python package named whitenoise. Install the latest version of the package using the command below.



pip install whitenoise

Once the module is installed add the following middleware in the settings.py file just below the django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware



MIDDLEWARE = [
    # ...
    "django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware",
    "whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware",
    # ...
]

Now add the following code in the settings.py file.



STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedStaticFilesStorage'

This step will tell the django to serve the staticfiles in the production. Add the following code to the settings.py file.



STATIC_URL = 'static/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static")
]

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles')

Once all the above steps are completed, run the command below.



py manage.py collectstatic

This step finishes all the important steps required to Host Django Website for Free.
Now commit all the changes and push the code to GitHub.
Visit Railway website and click on Start a New Project.
On the next page click in Deploy from GitHub repo and login via GitHub account and give all the necessary permissions required.

Once its done, now you can see your project repo in the list, select the project and click on Deploy Now button.
After few seconds your Django Project will be hosted on the railway app for free. Now you can access the hosted django website from anywhere.
Railway by default gives a long website URL which can be edited by settings section under domain option. Click in the edit icon and add any of your desired domain.

Conclusion

Railway is the quickest way to see your django project in action on the internet. I tried to explain the steps in detail to Deploy Django Website for Free. However, in case of any query feel free to comment your query below.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashish-makes/
GitHub: https://github.com/ashish-makes/

How to Develop and Deploy Django Tailwind Blog and Developer Portfolio Website

Ashish — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 12:01:51 +0000

A portfolio website is must for any developer as it showcases the developer's projects and help him to organize his work at a place.

I created an Developer Tailwind Portfolio Website using Python's Django Framework, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This website not only includes the section to showcase your projects but also has a dynamic blog page therefore its a Developer Portfolio + Blog Website.

An Overview of Django Tailwind CSS Portfolio

"Django Tailwind Blog" is a developer blog and portfolio website built using Django and Tailwind CSS. It includes several pages such as Home, About, Contact, Blog, Projects, Categories, and custom 404 pages.

The project features a clean and modern design that is fully responsive and optimized for performance. It includes a powerful admin interface for managing the content, and is easy to customize and deploy to a production environment.

Technologies used

Python (Django)
HTML
Tailwind CSS
JavaScript

Website Admin Dashboard

Using admin dashboard you can easily create, update and delete the blogposts. The admin dashboard uses WYSIWYG editor, TinyMCE to write your posts.

More information about this project can be found on my GitHub Profile.

Project Link: Django Tailwind CSS Portfolio
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashish-makes/
GitHub: https://github.com/ashish-makes/

Forem: Ashish

How to Setup your First Django Project | The Best and Simplest Way

Best way to setup a Django project

General Steps

Creating virtual environment

Activating virtual environment

Installing Django

Creating django project

Creating django app

Creating static folder

Creating templates folder

Updating settings.py

Updating urls.py file present in the project folder

Creating urls.py file in app folder

Creating HTML pages

base.html

index.html

about.html

contact.html

Creating views function for each page

Migrations

Creating super-user for the project

Conclusion

Check out this Open Source Django-Tailwind Developer Portfolio and Blog in 2024!

Django Tailwind Blog

Technologies used

Features

About Page

Contact Page

Custom 404 Page

How to Use ChatGPT4 for Free

GPT4 for Free

The First Way

Create your Own ChatGPT4 Bot on HuggingFace

The Second Way

Conclusion

How to Deploy Django Website for Free in 2023

Introduction

What is Railway?

Railway Features

How to Deploy Django Website for Free in 2023

Conclusion

How to Develop and Deploy Django Tailwind Blog and Developer Portfolio Website

An Overview of Django Tailwind CSS Portfolio

Technologies used

Pages

Website Admin Dashboard