Designing for Users and Building a Social Network With Django

The Real Python Podcast

Are you looking for a project to practice your Django skills? Designing the fundamental interactions of a social network is an instructive way to explore models and relationships while learning advanced Django skills. This week on the show, we talk with previous guest Martin Breuss about his new four-part series, “Build a Social Network With Django”.

Martin talks about the design process and ways to include user-focused features. He shares a handy CSS library to make your front end look modern with minimal effort.

We digress into a discussion of personal vs professional use of social networks. We also talk about the additional Real Python resources to help you build out the rest of your project.

Course Spotlight: How to Set Up a Django Project

In this course, you’ll learn the necessary steps that you’ll need to take to set up a new Django project. You’ll learn the basic setup for any new Django project, which needs to happen before programming the specific functionality of your project.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:01:46 – Build a Social Network with Django series
• 00:04:05 – Setting project scope and constraints
• 00:09:09 – Why use Django for this project?
• 00:12:23 – Learning through errors
• 00:15:29 – Sponsor: Honeybadger
• 00:16:14 – Models and relationships
• 00:19:05 – Implementing a post-save hook
• 00:23:17 – Django front end with the Bulma CSS framework
• 00:28:42 – Templates and profile pages
• 00:31:03 – Following, posts, and thoughts on user-centric features
• 00:37:18 – Personal and professional use of social media
• 00:48:03 – Setting up redirects
• 00:49:08 – Video Course Spotlight
• 00:50:19 – Additional Real Python resources for Django, including a Learning Path
• 00:53:07 – What would you add if this were a portfolio project?
• 00:54:14 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
• 00:56:36 – What do you want to learn next?
• 00:57:54 – Thanks and goodbye

Show Links:

• Build a Social Network With Django – Part 1 – Real Python
• Build a Django Front End With Bulma – Part 2 – Real Python
• Build and Handle POST Requests in Django – Part 3 – Real Python
• Build and Submit HTML Forms With Django – Part 4 – Real Python
• Django for Web Development (Learning Path) – Real Python
• Episode #87: Building a Content Aggregator and Working With RSS in Python – The Real Python Podcast
• Episode #4: Learning Python Through Errors – The Real Python Podcast
• The Flask Mega-Tutorial Part I: Hello, World! - miguelgrinberg.com
• Bulma: Free, open source, and modern CSS framework based on Flexbox
• Writing your first Django app, part 1 | Django documentation
• Get Started With Django Part 1: Build a Portfolio App – Real Python
• Get Started With Django Part 2: Django User Management – Real Python
• Tweetbot 6 for iOS
• 300-page iPhone bill - Wikipedia
• ArcGIS API for Python | ArcGIS Developer

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

• Get Started With Django: Build a Portfolio App
• Host Your Django Project on Heroku
• How to Set Up a Django Project

Support the podcast & join our community of Pythonistas