Django Hosting: What Is It?
Ripple News • 31st Mar, 16
Here’s the thing about things called Django: they tend to have very simple ambitions – whether it’s cleaning up Western towns, freeing slaves, building the gypsy jazz style, or, in the case of the Django we’re concerned with, making a simple programming language even easier to use.
Python programmers Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison created Django in 2003. Naming it after Jean “Django” Reinhardt, a Belgian musician who revolutionised jazz guitar – and probably would have been flattered if he’d had any conception of what a web framework was – they released it to the masses two years later. And since it’s currently backed by a non-profit group, any programming newbie can access it at no cost to themselves; and as a result, numerous notorious, barely-capable amateurs, from Instagram to NASA, currently make use of Django to develop their online presence.
Django, simply put, makes website development simpler and faster. Sure, plenty of folks out there love programming – it’s how Django and Python came to be – but, all said and done, developing a website is about realising the vision. And with Django, well, that vision gets realised one helluva lot quicker, with all the pesky technical stuff in between conception and realisation getting out of the way much faster. And there’s a whole host of tedious aspects of website development that Django can help you power through:
- User authentication and permissions
- Form handling
- Session cookies
- Content administration
- Generation of site maps
- Blog commenting and management
- Generation of RSS feeds
- Multi-language support
Django’s a heavy-duty bugger, and it can handle all the demanding traffic that any ambitious business hopes to pull online. And more importantly, it combines functionality with ease of use. It doesn’t matter how ambitious your ideas for your business’s online presence might be, or what you’d like your site to do; if you find programming intimidating (and don’t be ashamed – most people do, even if it’s not trendy to admit it in this day and age), Django can help you realise your colourful online ambitions slickly and simply, as long as you’ve got some understanding of basic HTML. No time wasted learning binary hoop-jumping here; with Django, stuff gets done.
What’s more, Django’s all about security – and if there’s anything that’s almost as important to an up-and-coming business as exposure and public image, it’s security. It’s a dangerous world out there, and success only makes it more dangerous; but Django does its part to prevent, among other things:
- SQL code injection
- XXS and CSRF
- HTTPS support
- Clickjacking
- Storage of user login details
- Monitoring of content uploaded to your server by users
Of course, you’ll need to make sure your host is compatible with Django – the best way being cross-referencing its website with the specifications of your host. It should be, though; and even if it’s not, a few tweaks and updates ought to change it.
And once all that’s done…well, if you’re a coder or website developer in a rush, or looking for a way to get around the deeper complexities of programming – you know, all those numbery bits – then Django is perfect for you. If there’s one thing the age of IT has taught us, it’s that almost everything can be made quicker and simpler; Django’s all about making that happen when it comes to programming.