Tutorial: Prerequisites and Installation

This tutorial is going to be strictly about Django. There are a few prerequisites you should be familiar with before going on.

• Python
  Django is a web framework written in Python and you really need to know Python to use Django to it’s fullest potential. I highly recommend reading Dive Into Python, a free web based book, as a good primer to the language. I have an outline for an article on learning just enough Python to start with Django but, it’s not completed yet.

• MVC
  Model / View / Controller concept of web frameworks. Arguably Django calls itself a MTV (Model / Template / View) Framework, the core concepts of separation of logic from presentation are very important for properly using Django. Knowing everything about MVC’s isn’t fully required but, if your completely unfamiliar with the concepts this tutorial does not teach them so you may get confused at the layout and structure of the program. This is especially true if your coming from a PHP background and were not using a framework before.

If you don’t already have Django installed the installation instructions on the main Django project page are quite complete. For OS X users it only takes 4 commands in Terminal to install Django

tar xzvf Django-1.0.2-final.tar.gz
cd Django-1.0.2-final
sudo python setup.py install

For Windows Users there’s a good guide from Think Hole

Once you have Django installed let’s go on to Step 2 - Starting a Project