Django Dashboard - Black Design

This article presents a simple, open-source Django Dashboard crafted on top of Black Dashboard, a popular Bootstrap 4 design downloaded 39k times and used by many designers and developers across the globe. The product might help beginners (and not only) to deliver faster a new Django project and reuse the existing codebase already enhanced with a database, authentication, and deployment scripts.  For newcomers, Django is a Python Web framework built by experienced developers that encourages the rapid development of modern web applications.

Thanks for reading!

• Black Dashboard Django – product page (contains DEMO & sources)

Using a starter project, sometimes called boilerplate code, might help developers start faster a new project by reusing code already tested and production-ready. The seed project presented in this article is crafted with a basic set of modules and features common to many Django projects: authentication, a codebase structured using best practices, form validation, and deployment scripts for well-known technologies like Docker and Gunicorn/Nginx.

What is Django

This popular Python-based was initially developed in 2003 by a team that was responsible for creating and maintaining newspaper websites. After creating a few websites, the team started to isolate the common parts and reuse the features shared across all products. This codebase evolved into a generic framework, which was open-sourced as the “Django Framework” in 2005.  Currently, Django gathered many developers across the globe and the Github metrics are really impressive: 55k Starts, 24k Forks plus an active community with 2k contributors. Why Django is so popular?

Complete – Django follows the “Batteries included” philosophy and provides almost everything developers might want to do “out of the box”. Once the developers learn the framework, they can do almost anything from simple websites. API’s, microservices, or complex eCommerce platforms.

Secure – Django comes with a built-in security pattern coded by experienced developers. Django helps developers avoid many common security mistakes by providing modules and layers that have been engineered and tested to protect the website automatically.

Versatile – Django is used to code many types of products, from hobby presentation sites to blog platforms or heavy traffic, scalable architectures. Instagram for instance has built a big part of the product on top of Django. Another important aspect is the integration with other systems and frontend technologies like React, Vue, Google as authentication or data provider.

For more resources related to this modern web framework, feel free to access:

• Django – The official website
• Django Introduction – a popular tutorial provided by Mozilla

Django Codebase

To use this free Django starter we need to be familiar with Python (basic knowledge) and feel comfortable using a terminal. The product can be downloaded directly from the repository published on Github and by following the built instructions provided in the README file, Black Dashboard Django will run in the browser in less than 5 minutes. Curious minds can follow the build instructions presented below and effectively start coding a new product on top.

Step 1# – Clone the sources (from Github)

$ git clone https://github.com/creativetimofficial/black-dashboard-django.git 
$ cd black-dashboard-django

Step 2# – Install modules/dependencies

$ # Install modules - SQLite Storage
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Step 3# – Create database & Tables

$ python manage.py makemigrations
$ python manage.py migrate

Step 4# – Start Project (development mode)

$ # Start the app 
$ # python manage.py runserver

If all goes well, we should see our starter running in the browser (the login page). Being a functional starter, only authenticated users can see the private pages like the dashboard, or profile page.

Black Dashboard Django - RTL Support

The Black Dashboard design comes packed with all plugins that you might need inside a project and documentation on how to get started. It is light and easy to use, and also very powerful.

Black Dashboard Django features over 16 individual components, giving you the freedom of choosing and combining. This means that there are thousands of possible combinations. 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 template comes in dark mode for your app to keep up with trends. If you are not a dark-mode lover, no worries; this template comes in light mode, too.

Thank you for reading! For more resources, please access:

• A curated index with more Django Templates provided by Creative-Tim
• More Django Dashboards provided by App Generator