There are quite a few great little tricks and tips one could use on their Django projects that would speed up development and save many headaches in the long run. From basic to obscure, these tips can help any skill-level of programmer become more adept with Django and all it’s glory.

Django is an excellent framework for Python. While it may not get as much ink as other popular frameworks like Rails, it is just as much a polished framework as any of the rest. It puts plenty of emphasis on the DRY principle (Don’t Repeat Yourself) in clean coding by automating many of the processes in programming.

1. Use relative paths in the configuration

For some reason, projects tend to be moved around in location from time to time. This can be an absolute bear to deal with if you don’t first plan ahead for the possibility. Rob Hudson has an excellent technique to ensure that your Django deployments can be moved around with ease, only having to edit a few lines of code in your settings files.

My default Django settings file has changed over time to now include settings that do not depend on the location of the project on the file system. This is great in a team environment where more than one person is working on the same project, or when deploying your project to a web server that likely has different paths to the project root directory.

Rob’s post has excellent code examples for setting up your Django installation in a very flexible way.

Photo by kaet44.

2. Use the {% url %} tag

Instead of hardcoding individual links, try using the backwards compatible {% url %} tag to achieve the same result. This will give you the absolute URL, so that if, heaven forbid, your Django project moves the links will still remain in tact.

Essentially the {% url %} takes a view name and its parameters and does a reverse lookup to return the queried URL. If you make changes to your urls.py file, the links won’t break.

While it’s not the most advanced tip, it’s an excellent technique to use in your django projects.

Photo by Dave_Apple.

3. Use Django admin for your PHP apps

Possibly one of the greatest features of Django is the user authentication system that Django has built straight into the core. It’s seriously easy to set up, and it comes packed with a robust system to authenticate users and configure other necessary settings.

This user system is so awesome that it’s even been suggested to use Django as your admin area for your PHP application. Here’s Jeff Croft on why Django is a great solution for an admin system for any application, regardless of language:

One of the core philosophies of Django is loose coupling. Besides the more alluring free-love connotation, this mean that each of the layers of Djangoâ