Lectures for "Dynamic Site Generation with Markdown & Django"

Introduction, Course Overview, Schedule, and Expectations

Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Free

Introduction and welcome to the course. We go over the course schedule and objectives. We also discuss who this course is best suited for, what you should be comfortable or at least familiar with at the beginning of the course, what topics we will cover, and what I hope you come away with. It should be an exciting course!

Defining Project Design Goals and Motivations

Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Free

The topic of this lecture is to outline some of my own design goals when I was creating a markdown-based blog in Django, and how that may translate to your own project direction. I introduce different flavors of Markdown, other markdown related tools I have used in the past, and why I felt like these tools did not deliver exactly the kind of functionality I desired.

Setting up your Development Environment

Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Free

This lecture goes over installation and setuop of the tools you will use in the course, including * Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) * git * VSCode * other software prerequisites

Blank Slate: Creating an Empty Django Project and App

Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Free

This lecture covers the steps required to create a Minimum Viable Prototype (MVP) of a Django project and application from a blank folder through a website published locally on your computer.

Your Initial Markdown Site

Thursday, June 25, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Paywalled

This lecture walks you through moving from a html-based pages to ones driven by markdown content. We cover the changes you need to make to your models, views, and other key parts of your code.

Initial Project Deep Dive: Inspecting your Models

Thursday, June 25, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Paywalled

This lecture dissects your initial project and walks you through ```models.py```, which defines the basic outline of how your data is organized.

Initial Project Deep Dive: Views and URL Mappings

Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Paywalled

This lecture continues the dissection of your initial Django project and walks you through ```views.py``` and ```urls.py```, which helps route http requests made to the server to the appropriate Python function or class that will render it.

Initial Project Deep Dive: HTML Templates

Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Status: Not Released
Paywall: Paywalled

This lecture continues the dissection of your initial Django project and walks you through your ```templates``` folder, which helps define your project's html files and how/where they interact with the Python code you are writing.