So you’ve read all the introductory material and have\ndecided you’d like to keep using Django. We’ve only just scratched the surface\nwith this intro (in fact, if you’ve read every single word, you’ve read about\n5% of the overall documentation).
\nSo what’s next?
\nWell, we’ve always been big fans of learning by doing. At this point you should\nknow enough to start a project of your own and start fooling around. As you need\nto learn new tricks, come back to the documentation. There’s also a bigger\nDjango ecosystem out there for you to explore that the community has\ncreated.
\nWe’ve put a lot of effort into making Django’s documentation useful, clear and\nas complete as possible. The rest of this document explains more about how the\ndocumentation works so that you can get the most out of it.
\n(Yes, this is documentation about documentation. Rest assured we have no plans\nto write a document about how to read the document about documentation.)
\nDjango’s got a lot of documentation – almost 450,000 words and counting –\nso finding what you need can sometimes be tricky. A good place to start\nis the Index. We also recommend using the builtin search feature.
\nOr you can just browse around!
\nDjango’s main documentation is broken up into “chunks” designed to fill\ndifferent needs:
\nThe introductory material is designed for people new\nto Django – or to web development in general. It doesn’t cover anything\nin depth, but instead gives a high-level overview of how developing in\nDjango “feels”.
The topic guides, on the other hand, dive deep into\nindividual parts of Django. There are complete guides to Django’s\nmodel system, template engine, forms framework, and much\nmore.
\nThis is probably where you’ll want to spend most of your time; if you work\nyour way through these guides you should come out knowing pretty much\neverything there is to know about Django.
\nWeb development is often broad, not deep – problems span many domains.\nWe’ve written a set of how-to guides that answer\ncommon “How do I …?” questions. Here you’ll find information about\ngenerating PDFs with Django, writing\ncustom template tags, and more.
\nAnswers to really common questions can also be found in the FAQ.
\nThe guides and how-to’s don’t cover every single class, function, and\nmethod available in Django – that would be overwhelming when you’re\ntrying to learn. Instead, details about individual classes, functions,\nmethods, and modules are kept in the reference. This is\nwhere you’ll turn to find the details of a particular function or\nwhatever you need.
If you are interested in deploying a project for public use, our docs have\nseveral guides for various deployment\nsetups as well as a deployment checklist\nfor some things you’ll need to think about.
Finally, there’s some “specialized” documentation not usually relevant to\nmost developers. This includes the release notes and\ninternals documentation for those who want to add\ncode to Django itself, and a few other things that don’t fit elsewhere.
Just as the Django code base is developed and improved on a daily basis, our\ndocumentation is consistently improving. We improve documentation for several\nreasons:
\nTo make content fixes, such as grammar/typo corrections.
To add information and/or examples to existing sections that need to be\nexpanded.
To document Django features that aren’t yet documented. (The list of\nsuch features is shrinking but exists nonetheless.)
To add documentation for new features as new features get added, or as\nDjango APIs or behaviors change.
Django’s documentation is kept in the same source control system as its code. It\nlives in the docs directory of our Git repository. Each document\nonline is a separate text file in the repository.
\nYou can read Django documentation in several ways. They are, in order of\npreference:
\nThe most recent version of the Django documentation lives at\nhttps://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/. These HTML pages are generated\nautomatically from the text files in source control. That means they reflect the\n“latest and greatest” in Django – they include the very latest corrections and\nadditions, and they discuss the latest Django features, which may only be\navailable to users of the Django development version. (See\nDifferences between versions below.)
\nWe encourage you to help improve the docs by submitting changes, corrections and\nsuggestions in the ticket system. The Django developers actively monitor the\nticket system and use your feedback to improve the documentation for everybody.
\nNote, however, that tickets should explicitly relate to the documentation,\nrather than asking broad tech-support questions. If you need help with your\nparticular Django setup, try the Django Forum or the\nDjango Discord server instead.
\nFor offline reading, or just for convenience, you can read the Django\ndocumentation in plain text.
\nIf you’re using an official release of Django, the zipped package (tarball) of\nthe code includes a docs/ directory, which contains all the documentation\nfor that release.
If you’re using the development version of Django (aka the main branch), the\ndocs/ directory contains all of the documentation. You can update your\nGit checkout to get the latest changes.
One low-tech way of taking advantage of the text documentation is by using the\nUnix grep utility to search for a phrase in all of the documentation. For\nexample, this will show you each mention of the phrase “max_length” in any\nDjango document:
Linux / macOS
$ grep -r max_length /path/to/django/docs/\nWindows
...\\> grep -r max_length \\path\\to\\django\\docs\\\nYou can get a local copy of the HTML documentation following a few steps:
\nDjango’s documentation uses a system called Sphinx to convert from\nplain text to HTML. You’ll need to install Sphinx by either downloading\nand installing the package from the Sphinx website, or with pip:
Linux / macOS
$ python -m pip install Sphinx\nWindows
...\\> py -m pip install Sphinx\nThen, use the included Makefile to turn the documentation into HTML:
$ cd path/to/django/docs\n$ make html\nYou’ll need GNU Make installed for this.
\nIf you’re on Windows you can alternatively use the included batch file:
\ncd path\\to\\django\\docs\nmake.bat html\nThe HTML documentation will be placed in docs/_build/html.
The text documentation in the main branch of the Git repository contains the\n“latest and greatest” changes and additions. These changes include\ndocumentation of new features targeted for Django’s next feature\nrelease. For that reason, it’s worth pointing out our policy\nto highlight recent changes and additions to Django.
\nWe follow this policy:
\nThe development documentation at https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ is\nfrom the main branch. These docs correspond to the latest feature release,\nplus whatever features have been added/changed in the framework since then.
As we add features to Django’s development version, we update the\ndocumentation in the same Git commit transaction.
To distinguish feature changes/additions in the docs, we use the phrase:\n“New in Django Development version” for the version of Django that hasn’t\nbeen released yet, or “New in version X.Y” for released versions.
Documentation fixes and improvements may be backported to the last release\nbranch, at the discretion of the merger, however, once a version of Django is\nno longer supported, that version of the\ndocs won’t get any further updates.
The main documentation web page includes links to documentation for\nprevious versions. Be sure you are using the version of the docs\ncorresponding to the version of Django you are using!