The very first thing I did was a presentation of Django at the Chicago Python Users Group. There were enough people in attendance that it led to a few early users. A few of those people blogged about it, and so on.
Django was open-sourced in 2005, and the world was very different back then. No GitHub/Bitbucket and people had very low standards/expectations for the design of an open-source project’s website. The best “marketing” thing we did was to work with our excellent designer (Wilson Miner) on making a beautiful site. Again, I think expectations have shifted here — it’s much more common for OSS projects to have nice-looking sites — but nice design still helps.
That was also before the days of Twitter, and blogging was big. I recall spending tons of time posting comments on blogs. Responding to “reviews” of the framework, answering questions, making it clear that we were listening to the nascent community.
Lastly, there’s lots to be said for great documentation and (sounds silly as I type this) software that actually works / can easily be installed. Again, expectations have shifted since 2005, but you really need to nail this. The best marketing is a great product.
Good god I owe you a beer. I am able to live a very nice life developing with django. Working on a large(ish) system with django, and it's an absolute joy. Thanks to you and everyone who has contributed.
Thanks for making Django, and for setting such a high bar on documentation. My personal documentation standards are much higher in large part due to how beautifully well documented Django is.
Hey, we're thinking of building an app in Python/Django for internal use (partly to learn Python and partly because there are many good Python tools for what we intend to do in the future). Can you recommend, in your opinion, the best resource for an experienced Rails & JS/Node dev to learn Django? Something that shows you best tools for dev env setup and includes a tutorial step by step for building a mid-complexity app would suit my learning style. I've written scripts in Python previously but nothing more....
The official diagno tutorial is a pretty good start, followed by Tango With Django. That, combined with your previous experience + Django's documentation should be enough to get you going!
The very first thing I did was a presentation of Django at the Chicago Python Users Group. There were enough people in attendance that it led to a few early users. A few of those people blogged about it, and so on.
Django was open-sourced in 2005, and the world was very different back then. No GitHub/Bitbucket and people had very low standards/expectations for the design of an open-source project’s website. The best “marketing” thing we did was to work with our excellent designer (Wilson Miner) on making a beautiful site. Again, I think expectations have shifted here — it’s much more common for OSS projects to have nice-looking sites — but nice design still helps.
That was also before the days of Twitter, and blogging was big. I recall spending tons of time posting comments on blogs. Responding to “reviews” of the framework, answering questions, making it clear that we were listening to the nascent community.
Lastly, there’s lots to be said for great documentation and (sounds silly as I type this) software that actually works / can easily be installed. Again, expectations have shifted since 2005, but you really need to nail this. The best marketing is a great product.