Lightweight Django

Chapter 3. Building a Static Site Generator

Django is known as the framework “for perfectionists with deadlines” for a reason. As we mentioned in Chapter 2, it was originally created in a newsroom setting so that journalists could rapidly produce, edit, and publish news stories on the fly. Since its open source release in July 2005, Django has been used by web developers to rapidly create websites and applications at varying scale. At the time, it was the first of its kind, and it has since grown to be a front-runner for web development. We now see it used everywhere from personal to large-scale applications such as Pinterest and Instagram.

While choosing the best framework is an important part of starting any project, deciding on the proper workflow is also a priority. Designers and developers being able to work effectively side by side is crucial to creating a successful end product. Yet how efficient is Django when designers and developers collaborate with one another?

One way we have found that designers and developers work best is for them to begin the project in parallel. Both parties are able to hit the ground running and utilize the portions of the framework they need to get started. A beneficial tutorial for achieving this goal is to create a static site application within our Django projects.

Creating Static Sites with Django

Most static site examples involve the creation of a blogging site, like Jekyll or Hyde. These generally include a simple set of base templates, URL patterns, ...