Web Development With Django

Why Web Development? Building a website is one of the coolest things you can do because once you make it, billions of people across the world can instantly access it and be impacted by it. Web development is useful whether you want to make hundreds of thousands of dollars working for a company, start a company, help a local non-profit, organize a big event, or countless other things. It is both an exciting and a powerful tool to have at your disposal.

Why Django? Django is a powerful web framework that powers some of the most popular websites on the internet today. It is increasingly being used in the industry at companies of all shapes and sizes, making it a great place to start learning web development. Best of all, it is written using the Python programming language, one of the most accessible and straight forward languages out there. Here are some websites you might of heard of that are built with Django: Pinterest, Instagram, The Washington Post, and many more!

An introduction to web development, not an introduction to Django. This is because the book focuses on the core tenets of web development in the context of Django, and not the other way around. Developing a website is much more than the backend web framework that the developer chooses to use and so this book looks at web development holistically. Additionally, this book touches upon all of the main components of a modern web framework, meaning that it will provide you with portable knowledge that you can use to easily learn any other web framework out there.

Is this book for me? This book is designed to serve as a guide and tutorial for beginners, but it also doubles as a reference for experienced web developers. If you are new to web development, you should sequentially work your way through the chapters in this book. It will walk you through the steps to building a simple Instagram clone. Be sure to follow along, building the website in sync with the guide, so that by the end of it you will have a neat looking website and some experience under your belt to help you build any website you want!

What should I know before starting? This book assumes you understand the following prior to starting:

• fundamental programming structures (types, expressions, conditionals, loops, etc.)
• fundamental data structures (lists, sets, dictionaries, etc.)
• basic python programming
• basic object-oriented programming (not essential, but helpful)

What will I learn? Through the course of this guide, you will learn the following technologies and languages:

• HTML
• CSS
• Bootstrap and Cross-Platform Web Apps
• Javascript and jQuery
• Django web framework
• Databasing principles