Creating the Home page in Django

Requirements

Before this stage you need to have completed the install, and also run django-admin to create a project (ie called 'MyProject') and also to create an app (ie called 'MyApp').

Register the App

In this your MyApp folder edit the 'apps.py' file, you should see something like this:

from django.apps import AppConfig

class MyappConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'MyApp'

Copy the name of the class, the example above is called MyappConfig. Now goto the 'settings.py' file and find the installed apps definition:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

]

Add a new entry at the start of this list for your app:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'MyApp.apps.MyappConfig',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

Define a URL

Now open the 'urls.py' from the project folder, add the following import line:

from MyApp import views as user_views

Now find the current 'urlpatterns', We need to add one for the home page of our system. So add:

path('', user_views.home, name='home')

Create a View

Now in the 'MyApp' folder edit the file called 'views.py'. We can add the code to generate our pages in here. So add the following:

def home(request):
    return render(request, 'MyApp/home.html',{'title':'Home'})

Create a Template

Now in the 'MyApp' folder we need to create a folder called 'templates' and then inside this folder, we need another folder called 'MyApp'.

Now in this new folder, add a new item (you can right click the folder in solution explorer and choose add, and then new item):

Now select a new html document. Call it 'home.html'

Replace the contents of the html with just:

{% block title %}Home{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
My Home Page
{% endblock %}

Run the server

Now to view your system you need to use the management program and choose option 2 for 'Manage' and then option 1 for 'RunServer'. You should see something similar to this: