It sounds like your project might be hindered by Mezzanine, at least initially. I would approach it first as a standalone Django app, make sure it does what you expect it to do, iron out the issues and refine the complexities. That will give you the experience to begin to grok what Mezzanine is doing "under the hood". Once you have your proof of concept, adding existing Django code to a vanilla Mezzanine project is a great exercise for developing an appreciation of the relationship between the two projects.
I have no opinions on front-end technologies. I leave that work to others. - ken On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 11:02 PM, J. Paskaruk <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm divin', man, I'm divin'. Honestly, I'm actually very comfortable with > what Django is and does, in the abstract, and I have a couple of things I > plan to develop literally as soon as I have a live site deployed. > > First is, I'm planning to move in the next couple months, and among the > things to do is sell off my book collection, so I'm gonna write a little > app to list my books, with prices, genre, etc - I seem to vaguely recall > that there is actually a Python library that enables you to scan barcodes > and get book info, which (if that actually exists) will be a useful > exercise in importing libraries, doing stuff in views, etc. I have a few > other, weirder ideas too, and home automation was one of the main things > that brought me here. Start off with little things like this, but I need to > be able to share the durn thing with my friends, and I also need a working > web page. I hate PHP. I put it up with Wordpress because Wordpress has a > huge community, basically, and I figured (rightly) that I would have the > easiest time with it, and my goal at the time was more to get my CSS-fu, > which I largely have now done. I'm just about ready to start integrating > jquery into my designs (as mentioned, I actually did my first little jq > piece the other day, but now I need to add an on resize thing... lotsa > fun.). > > The actual programming is basically just some time I need to spend > building increasingly complex things, but I didn't want to waste any time > developing on Wordpress, hence my desire to just get *something* deployed, > and start building from there. > > I'll peruse the repo for sure, and I will orient around the urls. That > (indicating where I should start looking, in the abstract) is a very useful > piece of advice for the way my brain works. :> > > On Friday, December 26, 2014 9:02:46 PM UTC-6, Kenneth Bolton wrote: >> >> http://effectivedjango.com/ <== Very helpful! >> >> Just keep at it. For whatever it is worth, I am largely self taught. When >> I started, documentation and "use the source, luke" was most of the help >> available. It took me years to start diving into that good stuff. I can >> tell you the reason I went with Django over RoR or a PHP framework was the >> quality of the documentation and the readability of the Python code. >> >> The place to start, I think, in reading the Mezzanine code is in the base >> urls.py >> <https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/blob/master/mezzanine/urls.py>. >> Work your way down the file and understand each line. Follow the patterns >> into the apps that make up Mezzanine – e.g. core, generic, blog, and pages >> – and read their respective urls.py. >> >> If it helps, think of Mezzanine as a Django app that has already been >> built to eliminate the tedium of building yet another hierarchical page, >> gallery, and blogging engine. The deeper your understanding of and comfort >> with Django, the better the whole thing will click. An instructive analogy, >> for me, is to reading and writing prose. The more prose you read, the >> better you get at reading it. Once you have read enough prose, the quality >> of your own prose will begin to improve (hopefully) and before long reading >> and writing prose becomes second nature. Code – whether Python, Ruby, Java >> – needs to be practiced, and reading code is the first step. >> >> Ultimately, just keep at it. If it interests you and you put in enough >> time, things will click. Some people get that click quickly. It took me a >> long time – almost 14 years – to transition from beginner reader of code >> convinced I had no aptitude for it to the first steps down with writing >> code on my own. The best part is that once the dots start to connect, the >> world really opens up. Also, the learning NEVER ends! >> >> best, >> ken >> >> >> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 8:09 PM, J. Paskaruk <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Thanks for the encouragement. I'm pretty good at expressing myself with >>> words (no braggin', as Will Sonnett used to say at 3am, just facts), but >>> sometimes that expressive ability makes me come off like an arsehole. Most >>> cause I'm kind of an arsehole. But my intentions are very good, for >>> whatever that's worth. I read the fab docs yesterday. Anyways, I see the >>> value of all these things. Just continuing to hold my face squarely in >>> front of this here firehose. >>> >>> The way I'm looking at the best practices thing is that there are best >>> practices for working professionals, and there are best practices for >>> students. I know that there are many more days ahead of me, reading docs, >>> but at this point I'm flailing just to find the right docs to read (if you >>> have any "everyone should read this" links or books, or hell, if someone's >>> laid out a curriculum that you think I should follow, I'm all ears...). >>> This whole experience has been very instructive, needless to say, and >>> that's all I'm after for the moment - grand failures that reveal inner >>> workings. In order to fail in a properly grand fashion, I need to have the >>> ability to throw a wrench into the gears of the factory, which fortunately >>> for us, is perfectly fine to do in circumstances where the entire factory >>> can be restored by a keystroke. But the entire system is, of course, >>> designed to stop people from doing such foolish things in daily life. Every >>> tutorial contains at least a nod, and usually a speech that borders on >>> sanctimony, about best security practices. Not that this is not valuable >>> knowledge, of course, but security is not your priority if you're trying to >>> learn how to code a given functionality. >>> >>> Anyways, my site is currently laid out with "pure" css, right now I'm >>> occupying myself by trying to recreate the same layout leaving bootstrap >>> intact. Being that I've done a couple of respectable responsive designs on >>> my own, I'm not a big fan of Bootstrap's complexity, but then, I want a >>> job. Also, I'm told it's very good at automating form validation, which I'm >>> all for avoiding if I can...:> >>> >>> Anyways, again, I appreciate your help AND doubly appreciate your >>> encouragement. Schools and teachers have never worked for me, so learning >>> things is always a struggle, and finding people with the right sort of >>> patience is a struggle of its own. >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Mezzanine Users" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Mezzanine Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mezzanine Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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