# A Beginner's Guide to Create Your First Django Project

In this comprehensive blog post, I will provide a step-by-step guide on how to set up a new Django project from scratch. We will cover everything from installing the necessary dependencies and creating a virtual environment, to configuring the project settings and running the development server.

Before we begin, please create a parent directory to store all the files. In my case, I will name it `myproject`.

Now we can start.

### The first step is to create a new virtual environment.

#### Install the `virtualenv` **module:**

```bash
sudo apt-get install virtualenv
```

#### Create a new environment:

```bash
cd myproject
virtualenv venv -p 3 # -p -> python version
source venv/bin/activate
```

#### After activating the environment, all modules will be installed within it.

### Step 2: We will install Django and start a new project.

```bash
pip3 install django
django-admin startproject project
```

### Step 3: Use environment variables and configure `settings.py`.

#### Install `python-dotenv` :

```bash
pip3 install python-dotenv
```

#### Now, create a `.env` file next to `settings.py`.

```bash
.
└── myproject/
    ├── venv/
    │   └── ...
    └── project/
        ├── project/
        │   ├── .env
        │   ├── asgi.py
        │   ├── __init__.py
        │   ├── settings.py
        │   ├── urls.py
        │   └── wsgi.py
        ├── manage.py
        ├── static/
        │   └── ...
        └── media/
            └── ...
```

#### Lets create some environment variables:

```bash
SECRET_KEY="Your_Secret_Key"
DEBUG=1
ALLOWED_HOSTS=127.0.0.1 # If allowed hostes more than 1 seprate them by ;
DEBLOYED=0
TRUSTED_ORIGINS="Your domians with http/https seperated by ;"
# "https://marwanfazora.com;https://blog.marwanfazora.com"
```

#### Now let's configure our `settings.py` to work both locally and during deployment based on the `DEPLOYED` variable.

```python

# load environment variables
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
load_dotenv()

SECRET_KEY = os.getenv('SECRET_KEY')

# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = bool(int(os.getenv('DEBUG')))

ALLOWED_HOSTS = os.getenv('ALLOWED_HOSTS').split(';')


STATIC_URL = 'static/'
MEDIA_URL = 'media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = 'media/'

if bool(int(os.getenv('DEBLOYED'))):
    STATIC_ROOT = 'static/'
    CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS = os.getenv('TRUSTED_ORIGINS').split(';')
else:
    STATICFILES_DIRS = [
        BASE_DIR / "static",
    ]
```

#### Now, configure `media` and `static` in `urls.py`.

```python
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static

urlpatterns += static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)
urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)urlpatterns += static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)
urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
```

#### Yay! We've successfully completed this step! 😄

### Let's run our project!

```bash
python3 manage.py runserver
```

#### And there you have it! Your first project is up and running, and you can run it both locally and on deployment. Great job, and congratulations! 🎉