Django Template - Argon Dashboard

Hello,

This article presents the latest freebie crafted by Creative-Tim, in partnership with AppSeed - Argon Dashboard design (free version) coded as a simple Django Template with a basic set of features like authentication, database, ORM and deployment scripts. The project can be downloaded from Creative-Tim's marketplace or directly from Github, under the MIT License.  

Thanks for reading!

• Django Template Argon  - the product page
• Django Argon Demo - LIVE app deployment
• Django Argon Source Code - released on Github, under the MIT License

Being open-source, the project can be compiled and started locally just by downloading the sources and follow the usage help provided in the start documentation: Argon Django Docs.

This simple starter aims to help developers to start faster a new Django project by coding specific features on top of an tested codebase that provides basic modules like authentication, database and others, commonly used across different Django projects.

Django Template - Argon, product features

• UI Kit: Argon Dashboard (Free Version) provided by Creative-Tim
• Codebase provided by AppSeed
• UI-Ready App, SQLite Database, Django Native ORM
• Modular design, clean codebase
• Session-Based Authentication, Forms validation
• Deployment scripts: Docker, Gunicorn / Nginx

As we can see, the product comes with a minimal set of features and modules, and also pre-configured for Docker and Gunicorn deployment.

What is Django

Django is a high-level Python web framework, built by experienced developers, that enables rapid development of secure and maintainable websites. The project is actively supported and versioned by an impressive open-source community.

Why using Django

Mature Framework - With the first release in September 2008, Django was improved constantly since then. Django follows the "Batteries included" philosophy and provides almost everything developers might want to do "out of the box". Because everything you need is part of the one "product", it all works seamlessly together, follows consistent design principles, and has extensive and up-to-date documentation.

Security - A super-important aspect of any project is covered nicely by Django by providing built-in protections for many security threats. Django provides a secure way to manage user accounts and passwords, avoiding common mistakes like putting session information in cookies where it is vulnerable (instead of cookies just contain a key, and the actual data is stored in the database) or directly storing passwords rather than a password hash.

Versatile - Django provides choices for almost any functionality you might need in your project (e.g. several popular databases, templating engines, etc.), it can also be extended to use other components if needed.

Useful Django Resources:

• Django - official website and docs
• Reddit/r/Django - a super active Reddit community
• Django - related content provided by the (popular) Full-Stack-Python platform

Argon Dashboard

UI Vendor Notes - Argon Dashboard is built with over 100 individual components, giving you the freedom of choosing and combining. All components can take variations in color, that you can easily modify using SASS files.

You will save a lot of time going from prototyping to full-functional code, because all elements are implemented. This Dashboard is coming with pre-built examples, so the development process is seamless, switching from our pages to the real website is very easy to be done.

If you want to get inspiration or just show something directly to your clients, you can jump start your development with our pre-built example pages. You will be able to quickly set up the basic structure for your web project.

This modern UI Kit comes with a generous set of pre-built pages:

• Dashboard - single page
• UI  - icons, tables, components
• Widgets - Google Maps
• Authentication - Login, Register

The product comes also with great docs and free support via Github (issues tracker).

Django Template - How to use the code

The starter is documented in two places: the README file provided in sources and via the official product documentation - Argon Django Docs, hosted in a public space.  To use and compile the starter a Python3 environment is required and (optionally) GIT command tool in case we want to clone the sources from the public repository.

Environment

To use the stater, Python3 should be installed properly in the workstation. If you are not sure if Python is properly installed, please open a terminal and type python --version. The full-list with dependencies and tools required to build the app:

• Python3 - the programming language used to code the app
• GIT - used to clone the source code from the Github repository
• Basic development tools (g++ compiler, python development libraries ..etc) used by Python to compile the app dependencies in your environment.

App Codebase (simplified)

< PROJECT ROOT >
   |
   |-- core/                       # Implements app logic
   |    |-- static/
   |    |    |-- <css, JS, images> # CSS files, Javascripts files
   |    |-- templates/             # Templates used to render pages
   |         |-- includes/         # HTML chunks and components
   |         |-- layouts/          # Master pages
   |         |-- accounts/         # Authentication pages
   |         |
   |      index.html               # The default page
   |       *.html                  # All other HTML pages
   |
   |-- authentication/             # Handles auth routes (login and register)
   |-- app/                        # A simple app that serve HTML files
   |
   |-- requirements.txt            # Development modules - SQLite storage
   |
   |-- .env                        # Inject Configuration via Environment
   |-- manage.py                   # Start the app - Django default start script
   |
   |-- ****************************

Thanks for reading! For more resources, please access:

• See more Django Templates provided by Creative-Tim
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