What is Django?

Get introduced to Django, its history, its community, and its key features.

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Meet Django

Django is a free and open-source web application framework written in Python. It is used for rapid web development and clean, pragmatic design. It is built by experienced developers to make repetitive tasks easier, so we can focus on writing apps instead of reinventing the wheel.

The origins of Django

Django was created in 2003 when web developers at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper started using Python for their web development. After creating a number of websites, they started to factor out and reuse lots of common code and design patterns. That common code led to a generic web development framework that was open-sourced as the “Django” project in 2005. Since the original developers were surrounded by those newspaper writers, well-written documentation is a key part of Django. This means that there are excellent references to check out on the official Django documentation pages.

The Django community

The Django framework is extremely large, but the Django community is absolutely massive. The community has contributed a lot of third party code for Django. No matter what we are trying to do, there’s a good chance that we will find the solution for it on djangopackages.org. The website includes everything, from authentication and authorization to full-on Django-powered content management systems, from e-commerce add-ons to integrations with Stripe.

Django features

Some features that make Django an ideal framework for web application development are as follows:

  • Super fast: Django development is extremely fast. Our ideas can take the shape of a product very quickly.

  • Fully loaded: Django has dozens of projects that can be integrated to carry out common tasks such as user authentication, authorization, and content administration.

  • Versatile: Django can be used for almost any kind of project, from CMSs to e-commerce apps to on-demand delivery platforms.

  • Secure: Django also has support to prevent common security issues, including cross-site request forgery, cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and clickjacking.

  • Scalable: Django websites can scale fast to meet high traffic demands.