Django community: Community blog posts RSS
This page, updated regularly, aggregates Community blog posts from the Django community.
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Becoming a Django Apologist
It's been roughly four years since my introduction to the Django framework and I thought I'd write a little post to commemorate this. In my mind nothing had as big an impact on my career as my decision to work at the Journal World. When I started there I knew basically nothing about software engineering or open-source, and it is entirely thanks to my excellent (and patient) coworkers there that I was able to learn about these things. -
Going Responsive
I was somewhat skeptical of responsive design. Grids add some additional HTML which is essentially for layout and I thought responsive design generally relied on Javascript, but after transforming my own website I found things are getting better. Let's start with what my website used to look like. Boxy and segmented, it was built for a specific width and not on a grid. It looked alright on mobile because I used the meta viewport element correctly. For the redesign I used bootstrap with its responsive grid and font awesome, which is as awesome as the name implies. Gone were the boxes, replaced with infinitely wide horizontal stripes and content suspended on an invisible grid. A grid which can resize its cells and stack them all vertically when down at a phone resolution — thanks to everything floating left. My cat-based banner image previously was precisely cropped, but that wasn't going to work in a world where everything is infinitely wide. I went with the common approach of making the picture of my cat full width and centred, keeping the most interesting part of the picture in the middle of the viewport. I had to tweak the media queries in the … -
New Podcast: Django Roundup
The team over at Lincoln Loop have just started a new Django podcast - and their very first item in podcast #1 was a nice little review of django-readonly-site! -
New Podcast: Django Roundup
The team over at Lincoln Loop have just started a new Django podcast - and their very first item in podcast #1 was a nice little review of django-readonly-site! -
New Podcast: Django Roundup
Lincoln Loop are one of the earlier Django-based development shops, and their various employees contribute in many ways to the open-source community. One new addition they've just made is the launch of Django Round-Up, a podcast covering the news in the Django community. This is a podcast hosted by @kennethlove and @bkonkle from @lincolnloop that highlights recent articles and projects in the Django community. We love talking about web development, so our podcast focuses on casual conversations as we cover the latest blog posts and project releases. I was surprised to hear my name coming through my headphones, only a minute into their first episode - with a quick review of my recently-published django-readonly-site package. As a result of their comments I've made some minor updates to address questions and suggestions from the podcast team. I want to publicly thank them for including my item in their inaugural episode, and suggest that anybody in the Django community goes out and checks out this valuable new resource! -
New Podcast - Django Roundup
Lincoln Loop are one of the earlier Django-based development shops, and their various employees contribute in many ways to the open-source community. One new addition they've just made is the launch of Django Round-Up, a podcast covering the news in the Django community. This is a podcast hosted by @kennethlove and @bkonkle from @lincolnloop that highlights recent articles and projects in the Django community. We love talking about web development, so our podcast focuses on casual conversations as we cover the latest blog posts and project releases. I was surprised to hear my name coming through my headphones, only a minute into their first episode - with a quick review of my recently-published django-readonly-site package. As a result of their comments I've made some minor updates to address questions and suggestions from the podcast team. I want to publicly thank them for including my item in their inaugural episode, and suggest that anybody in the Django community goes out and checks out this valuable new resource! -
New Podcast - Django Roundup
Lincoln Loop are one of the earlier Django-based development shops, and their various employees contribute in many ways to the open-source community. One new addition they've just made is the launch of Django Round-Up, a podcast covering the news in the Django community. This is a podcast hosted by @kennethlove … -
Travel Tips for Geeks: Preventing Theft
This is the first in a set of blog posts based on my experiences traveling in various places around the world. This particular safety-related post is about theft, not scams, which I may cover in another article. For this first article, I'm hoping this gets on various technical RSS feeds. I'm doing this because many of the readers of such feeds attend conferences and are strangers in far and distant places. About Thieves Thieves (or pick pockets) are everywhere. I've seen extremely suspicious activity in Portland, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Barcelona, Florence, Pisa, and Krakow. Years ago in Washington DC I had stuff stolen from me twice so I've been observant and careful ever since. Anywhere there are non-residents distracted by looking at new vistas while suffering from travel fatigue is where most thieves can be found. I've learned a lot by observation and doing research but I don't claim to be an expert. All I claim to be is someone who doesn't want to be ripped off far from home. The Basics: Any place with tourists is risky While it can be said that thieves can be anywhere, the truth is that they focus on where the tourists go. … -
Travel Tips for Geeks: Preventing Theft
This is the first in a set of blog posts based on my experiences traveling in various places around the world. This particular safety-related post is about theft, not scams, which I may cover in another article. For this first article, I'm hoping this gets on various technical RSS feeds. I'm doing this because many of the readers of such feeds attend conferences and are strangers in far and distant places. About Thieves Thieves (or pick pockets) are everywhere. I've seen extremely suspicious activity in Portland, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Barcelona, Florence, Pisa, and Krakow. Years ago in Washington DC I had stuff stolen from me twice so I've been observant and careful ever since. Anywhere there are non-residents distracted by looking at new vistas while suffering from travel fatigue is where most thieves can be found. I've learned a lot by observation and doing research but I don't claim to be an expert. All I claim to be is someone who doesn't want to be ripped off far from home. The Basics: Any place with tourists is risky While it can be said that thieves can be anywhere, the truth is that they focus on where the tourists go. … -
Comics v2.2.0 released with Django 1.5 support
Version 2.2.0 of my comics aggregator is now released. It features a general upgrade of dependencies, including the move from Django 1.4 to Django 1.5, and a lot of updates to comic crawlers. The Django upgrade was completed months ago and it’s been running my Comics instance since, so it’s about time to get it released before Django 1.6 arrives in a month or two. Regarding the crawler updates, it’s a bit sad to see that many of the crawlers have been broken for months without me or anybody else noticing, but it’s hard to catch some content lacking in the middle of a firehose of similar content. I guess I’ll have to make it a monthly task to look through the crawler status page of my Comics instance and do patch releases with updated crawlers. Check out the project docs for more information about Comics and this release in particular. -
Factory Boy as an Alternative to Django Testing Fixtures
When testing a Django application you often need to populate the test database with some sample data. The standard Django TestCase has support for fixture loading but there are a number of problems with using fixtures: First, they must be updated each time your schema changes. Second, they force you to hard-code dates which can create test failures when your date, which was “very far in the future” when the fixture was created, has now just passed. Third, fixtures are painfully slow to load. They are discovered, deserialized and the data inserted at the start of every test method. Then at the end of the test that transaction is rolled back. Many times you didn’t even use the data in the fixture. What is the alternative to fixtures? It’s simple: your test cases should create the data they need. Let’s take a simple model: # models.py from django.db import models class Thing(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=100) description = models.CharField(max_length=100) def __unicode__(self): return self.name Now we want to write some tests which need some Things in the database. # tests.py import random import string from django.test import TestCase from .models import Thing def random_string(length=10): return u''.join(random.choice(string.ascii_letters) for x in range(length)) class ThingTestCase(TestCase): … -
Django Round-Up
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Django Round-Up
Click here to see this post in it's natural habitat and to watch and leave comments. For a while now we've sent out a regular newsletter called the Django Round-Up, a collection of recent links, packages, and jobs in the Django community, curated by Pete Baumgartner. It's a great resource for keeping up with the Django community and filling in the gaps of what you might have seen in your feeds or on social networks. We've decided to take the Round-Up a step further, so yesterday we published the first episode of our new Django Round-Up podcast! Hosted by Kenneth Love and Brandon Konkle, the podcast covers recent activity in the Django community with a lighthearted and conversational style. Check out the temporary site to listen or subscribe, and watch for new episodes as we will be recording them frequently. The links won't always be the same ones you see in the newsletter, so keep an eye on the site to see what links we cover in each episode even if you don't have time to listen to the show. We hope you enjoy the show, and keep an eye out for more announcements in the future! -
Django Round-Up
For a while now we've sent out a regular newsletter called the Django Round-Up, a collection of recent links, packages, and jobs in the Django community, curated by Pete Baumgartner. It's a great resource for keeping up with the Django community and filling in the gaps of what you might have seen in your feeds or on social networks. We've decided to take the Round-Up a step further, so yesterday we published the first episode of our new Django Round-Up podcast! Hosted by Kenneth Love and Brandon Konkle, the podcast covers recent activity in the Django community with a lighthearted and conversational style. Check out the temporary site to listen or subscribe, and watch for new episodes as we will be recording them frequently. The links won't always be the same ones you see in the newsletter, so keep an eye on the site to see what links we cover in each episode even if you don't have time to listen to the show. We hope you enjoy the show, and keep an eye out for more announcements in the future! -
The Business of Sentry
Two weeks ago I attended EuroPython. It’s one of my favorite events of the year (likely because of the amazing venue it’s been at for the last three of those). This year I gave a talk on how we operate Sentry, titled “Open Source as a Business”. It goes into details on how … -
The Business of Sentry
Two weeks ago I attended EuroPython. It's one of my favorite events of the year (likely because of the amazing venue it's been at for the last three of those). This year I gave a talk on how we operate Sentry, titled "Open Source as a Business". It goes into details on how we op... -
The Business of Sentry
Two weeks ago I attended EuroPython. It’s one of my favorite events of the year (likely because of the amazing venue it’s been at for the last three of those). This year I gave a talk on how we operate Sentry, titled “Open Source as a Business”. It goes into details on how we operate Sentry (from... -
Caktus is hiring a Design Visionary and User Experience Virtuoso with a Knack for Coding
Do your mornings usually consist of reading design blogs and drinking coffee? Are you obsessive about fonts? Are you constantly seeking out new inspiration to make your designs better? As a Front-End Developer + Designer at Caktus, you’ll be able to put your passion for design and development to work by creating beautiful designs for complex websites. You will work closely with clients to bring their visions to life and help lead the branding and design process. Our designers take ownership of the user experience and design process from the beginning and collaborate with our development team to implement the vision. You should be passionate about the open source community and the philosophy behind it. If you’re interested in becoming part of and contributing to a creative, dynamic team, here’s an idea of what you’ll do: Listen closely to clients and translate their needs into a comprehensive design and branding vision Direct all the aspects of the design process, user experience, and front-end development on a diverse set of projects Get your hands dirty with Django/HTML/CSS and run projects locally on your development laptop Use your love of design and knowledge of user experience to create functional mockups and wireframes … -
My experiences with Django and Python 3.3
Recently I've become involved in a couple of Django efforts that used Python 3.3. The quick summary of what I learned is pretty much what I expected: Out of the box Django 1.5 (and the pending 1.6 release) works fine with Python 3.3.2. The following are my notes, observations, and resources on the subject of working with Python 3 (with or without Django). Use Python 3.3.2! Myself and others have encountered problems with using Django 1.5+ and earlier versions of Python 3. The issues can be tricky, for example syncdb fails in curious ways on Python 3.3.0. The answer, for me, is to use Python 3.3.2 and don't look back. Checking for Python 3 Compatibility The steps I use are below. They are in rough order: Look up the package on PyPI and see if any of it's trove classifiers mention Python 3 status. See if a pull request for Python 3 support is outstanding. Run the test suite using Python 3.3 Use 2to3 to scan the code for issues. If a Django project, check the models for __str__() methods. If it has them, it's a pretty good indicator it's Python 3.3 friendly. Make a judgement call. Important Packages that … -
My experiences with Django and Python 3
The following are my notes, observations, and resources on the subject of working with Python 3 (with or without Django). Recently I've become involved in a couple of Django efforts that used Python 3.3. The quick summary of what I learned is pretty much what I expected: Out of the box Django 1.5 (and the pending 1.6 release) works fine with Python 3.3.2. Use Python 3.3.2! Myself and others have encountered problems with using Django 1.5+ and earlier versions of Python 3. The issues can be tricky; for example syncdb fails in curious ways on Python 3.3.0. The answer, for me, is to use Python 3.3.2 and don't look back. Checking for Python 3 Compatibility The steps I use are below. They are in rough order: Look up the package on PyPI and see if any of it's trove classifiers mention Python 3 status. See if a pull request for Python 3 support is outstanding. Run the test suite using Python 3.3 Use 2to3 to scan the code for issues. If a Django project, check the models for __str__() methods. If it has them, it's a pretty good indicator it's Python 3.3 friendly. Make a judgement call. Important Packages that … -
Caktus and Python Software Foundation Collaborate on PyCon 2014 in Montreal Site
Caktus is proud to be a part of the launch of the PyCon 2014 in Montreal website. We were delighted to be selected as this year’s partner for software development and brand updates. In the past, we've enjoyed working with the Python Software Foundation as a collaborator for the Raspberry.io branding and development and are excited to help out with the PyCon website. This release of the PyCon 2014 in Montreal site included cleaning up the deployment process, a few fixes to the proposal process, and a cohesive branding strategy that we worked closely with the PyCon staff to create, and will be used throughout the conference. This first phase focused on getting the newly designed site launched with all of the information people need to plan their travel and submit talk proposals. We have a number of new enhancements in the works and invite you to follow along with the development and give feedback on the site's Github repository. -
Europython 2013
I have been to Europython from Jul 1th to 3th. I felt like a teenager on spring break. Maybe because I was on a trip with two good friends, but mostly because it has been a awesome event. This has been my first time at Europython. Every body has ever told me that it was a super event. And they were right. The venue: Florence: should I say more? We were staying at a lovely house in a rented -
Robots and Sitemaps
Dealing with google site indexing from google and other search engines can be a pain, but fortunately django makes it easy with django.contrib.sitemaps and the django-robots app. In this video learn to create sitemap.xml and robots.txt quickly and easily.Watch Now... -
A Djangonaut Building a Webapp in Go with Gorilla
At Lincoln Loop, we have been building large web applications using Django since 2007. Recently, however, we have recently started using Go as a critical network component of Botbot.me. -
A Djangonaut Building a Webapp in Go with Gorilla
Click here to see this post in it's natural habitat and to watch and leave comments. At Lincoln Loop, we have been building large web applications using Django since 2007. Recently, however, we have recently started using Go as a critical network component of Botbot.me. Reading others' successes stories about replacing some existing components of their infrastructure with a new incarnation written in Go (Disqus and Iron.io gave me the motivation to build a webapp that is a bit more complex than the canonical "hello world" one page app. The result of this experiment is called gowebexp and is available on BitBucket. Here are a few things I learned in the process. Go is a modern language with an amazingly deep standard libraries given its age. It comes with everything you need to build a webapp: template language full featured webserver HTTP request multiplexer cookies ... However it is a totally different beast than something like "Django":htpp://djangoproject.com/. Go standard libraries tend to be very low level and, as of now, I am not aware of any full-featured framework than can compare with Django in terms of ease of use, features, and documentation. For example, here's a few things that you …