The Django Framework
Django is a free and open-source server-side web framework, which was created with the primary goal of easing web development. It is written in Python and is developed by the Django Software Foundation.
The framework can be especially useful when dealing with user authentication, content administration, site maps and many other things, as it provides a full development stack. Some of Django’s best advantages are its speed, scalability, versatility and let’s not forget – security.
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Being an open-source project, Django has great support and its community has grown greatly in the past decade. Furthermore, with Python being one of the most popular programming languages in the world, there are a lot of tutorials and resources available on the Internet.
Django can be viewed as an MVC architecture. Its main features are the ORM (Object-Relational Mapper) that serves as the connection between the Model (realized as Python data models), the View and the Controller (regular-expression-based URL dispatcher).
A serialization system that can read and produce XML or JSON formats is also implemented, which is a perfect feature for database operations.
The core principle of Django’s logic is DRY: Don’t Repeat Yourself, meaning trying to write cleaner and easier to read code. Therefore, one key approach when working with Django is the reusability of components. One should try to write code with numerous small methods with as clean logic as possible. The benefits of this method are improved testability and readability of the code.
Another vital feature of the framework is the possibility to extend the code with the great variety of packages available. A regular project can be enlarged quite rapidly in terms for authentication, authorization, error handling and many others types of services.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is one of the most common web hosting services nowadays, as it allows more than one website to go through only one web server that is connected to the Internet.
The principle behind this type of web hosting is simple: several users share the server and each receive their own partition, consisting of specific amount of disk space, bandwidth and processing power.
The websites that are connected to the server share all relevant resources, which affects performance but on the other hand the server is already managed for you. The need for special knowledge in web and server administration becomes irrelevant, since the host provider manages all the maintenance of the server.
A downside of this configuration is the fact that there are more security issues in comparison to dedicated web servers. When more than one websites share the same server and one of them is affected by malicious activity, it affects the rest of them too.
This is usually the cheapest variant in comparison to other types of hosting and is a good option when it comes to handling websites that don’t have a large amount of web traffic going on. It is the perfect solution for websites that are used for personal needs or small businesses.
Are the Two of Them Compatible?
Django is a great framework for building web applications quickly and efficiently and being written in Python is a great plus. The language is easy to learn and is quite popular worldwide, because it vastly reduces the amount of code that needs to be written in compared to languages like Java. Some examples of the many major organizations that use Python in their IT infrastructures are Google, NASA, Yahoo!, Nokia, Disney and Mozilla.
If one decides to realize a Python project with shared hosting, a quick search for shared hosting services is needed. There are numerous hosting companies out there, but unfortunately not all of them support Python.
Maybe one of the main advantages in choosing Django for shared web hosting is its good security against attacks like SQL injections, XSS and CSRF attacks and clickjacking. Additionally, the source code of the website is hidden, which is a plus in the security aspect.
In the main Django distribution, there is already a package that allows for one Django project to run multiple websites, each with its own content and applications, so the application of shared hosting in combination with Django is possible.
Additionally, the creation of a virtual environment to install custom modules might be beneficial for more refined project development.
In conclusion, Django is the perfect framework that enables rapid development of rather maintainable websites and has many advantages for quick and clean web development. Combination of Django and shared hosting can be the perfect choice for everyone on a budget.