Django's primary goal is to ease the creation of complex, database-driven websites. Django emphasizes reusability and "pluggability" of components, rapid development, and the principle of don't repeat yourself. Python is used throughout, even for settings files and data models. Django also provides an optional administrative create, read, update and delete interface that is generated dynamically through introspection and configured via admin models.

Django's configuration system allows third party code to be plugged into a regular project, provided that it follows the reusable app[19] conventions. More than 2500 packages[20] are available to extend the framework's original behavior, providing solutions to issues the original tool didn't: registration, search, API provision and consumption, CMS, etc.

This extensibility is, however, mitigated by internal components dependencies. While the Django philosophy implies loose coupling,[21] the template filters and tags assume one engine implementation, and both the auth and admin bundled applications require the use of the internal ORM. None of these filters or bundled apps are mandatory to run a Django project, but reusable apps tend to depend on them, encouraging developers to keep using the official stack in order to benefit fully from the apps ecosystem.

Django may also be run in conjunction with Jython on any Java EE application server such as GlassFish or JBoss. In this case django-jython must be installed in order to provide JDBC drivers for database connectivity, which also provides functionality to compile Django in to a .war suitable for deployment.[30]

For developing a Django project, no special tools are necessary, since the source code can be edited with any conventional text editor. Nevertheless, editors specialized on computer programming can help increase the productivity of development, e.g. with features such as syntax highlighting. Since Django is written in Python, text editors which are aware of Python syntax are beneficial in this regard.

Integrated development environments (IDE) add further functionality, such as debugging, refactoring, unit testing, etc. As with plain editors, IDEs with support for Python can be beneficial. Some IDEs that are specialized on Python additionally have integrated support for Django projects, so that using such an IDE when developing a Django project can help further increase productivity. For comparison of such Python IDEs, see the main article:

There is a semiannual conference for Django developers and users, named "DjangoCon", that has been held since September 2008. DjangoCon is held annually in Europe, in May or June;[51] while another is held in the United States in August or September, in various cities.[52] The 2012 DjangoCon took place in Washington D.C from 3 to 8 September. 2013 DjangoCon was held in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and the post-conference Sprints were hosted at Digital Bootcamp, computer training center.[53] The 2014 DjangoCon US returned to Portland, WA from 30 August to 6 September. The 2015 DjangoCon US was held in Austin, TX from 6 to 11 September at the AT&T Executive Center. The 2016 DjangoCon US was held in Philadelphia, PA at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 17 to 22 July.[54]

Django mini-conferences were held in Hobart, Australia in July 2013, in Brisbane, Australia in August 2014 and 2015, and in Melbourne, Australia in 2016.[55]

Programmers have ported Django's template design from Python to other languages, providing decent cross-platform support. Some of these options are more direct ports; others, though inspired by Django and retaining its concepts, take the liberty to deviate from Django's design: