DEV Community: Arslon Erkinov

Building a Contact Form in Django 6

Arslon Erkinov — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:03:44 +0000

Today I completed another important milestone for my Django project.

I implemented a fully working Contact Form that allows visitors to send messages directly from the website.

Features
Contact page
Name, Email, Subject and Message fields
Email delivery using Gmail SMTP
Success message after submission
CSRF protection
Tailwind CSS responsive UI
Secure configuration with environment variables

One of the most useful parts of today's work wasn't just writing the feature—it was debugging common Django issues such as:

The view didn't return an HttpResponse
settings is not defined
Missing custom settings values
SMTP configuration

These kinds of problems are part of everyday backend development, and solving them helps build a better understanding of the framework.

The next steps for the project are adding Google reCAPTCHA, storing contact messages in the database, and preparing everything for production deployment.

Every feature completed makes the application a little more production-ready.

django #python #webdev #backend #fullstack #programming

Adding Privacy Policy & Cookie Policy to My Django Food Blog

Arslon Erkinov — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:56:41 +0000

Yesterday I focused on another important step toward making my Django Food Blog more production-ready: adding legal pages for transparency and user trust.

When building real applications, features and UI are only part of the process. A professional website also needs clear information about data usage and cookies.

✅ Privacy Policy Page

I created a complete Privacy Policy page that includes:

Information about collected data
How user data is used
Cookies information
Third-party services
Data security
User rights
Contact information
🍪 Cookie Policy Page

I also added a dedicated Cookie Policy page explaining:

What cookies are
Essential cookies
Analytics cookies
Functional cookies
Cookie management
Policy updates
🛠️ Django Implementation

Added new routes:

/privacy-policy/
/cookie-policy/

Created new views:

privacy_policy
cookie_policy

Added templates:

templates/privacy_policy.html
templates/cookie_policy.html
🧭 Navigation Update

To make these pages easily accessible, I added links to the footer navigation.

Users can now quickly find important legal information from any page.

💡 What I Learned

Building a production-ready application is not only about writing code and adding features.

Trust, transparency, privacy, and compliance are also important parts of modern web development.

This update brings my Django Food Blog one step closer to becoming a complete real-world application.

More improvements coming soon! 🚀

python #django #webdev #privacy

Optimizing My Django Food Blog: Performance, SEO & Better Error Pages

Arslon Erkinov — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:05:36 +0000

Today's development session was focused on making my Django Food Blog faster, more search-engine friendly, and more resilient.

Rather than introducing a new feature, I concentrated on the improvements that help create a production-ready application.

⚡ Lazy Loading Images

The first optimization was enabling native browser lazy loading.

loading="lazy"

Images are now loaded only when they enter the user's viewport.

Benefits:

Faster initial page load
Reduced bandwidth usage
Better Core Web Vitals
Improved user experience

🖼️ WebP Images

I also added support for WebP images.

Compared to traditional JPEG and PNG formats, WebP provides much smaller file sizes while maintaining excellent visual quality.

This can significantly improve loading performance across the site.

🔍 Image Sitemap

Search engines don't always discover images efficiently.

To solve this, I implemented a dedicated Image Sitemap, allowing Google and other search engines to crawl and index recipe images more effectively.

🚫 Custom 404 Page

Instead of showing Django's default error page, I created a custom 404 page that matches the application's design and helps users continue browsing.

⚠️ Custom 500 Page

I also designed a custom 500 Internal Server Error page.

Even if something unexpected happens, users now see a branded and user-friendly page instead of a generic server error.

💡 What I Learned

Not every productive day is about adding new functionality.

Sometimes the biggest improvements come from optimizing performance, strengthening SEO, and refining the overall user experience.

These changes may seem small individually, but together they make the application feel faster, more reliable, and much closer to production quality.

I'm excited to keep improving this project one step at a time.

python #django #webdev #performance

Completing the SEO Foundation of My Django Food Blog

Arslon Erkinov — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 16:53:46 +0000

Today I completed one of the most important stages of my Django Food Blog—building a complete SEO and structured data foundation.

The goal wasn't simply to improve search rankings, but to make the application understandable to search engines and ready for production.

🌐 Technical SEO

The project now includes:

Dynamic Title
Meta Description
Canonical URL
Open Graph
Twitter Cards
Sitemap.xml
Robots.txt

These features help search engines crawl the website correctly while improving how pages appear when shared on social media.

🏗️ Structured Data

I expanded the Schema.org implementation with several new schemas:

Recipe
AggregateRating
BreadcrumbList
FAQPage
WebSite
Organization
Person (Author)
Publisher
VideoObject

One of today's biggest improvements was creating relationships between these schemas using @id.

The structure now looks like this:

WebSite → Organization → Person → Recipe

This creates a much cleaner semantic model that search engines can understand.

🎥 VideoObject

Recipes containing YouTube videos now include a VideoObject schema with:

Name
Description
Thumbnail
Embed URL
Upload Date

This allows Google to better understand recipe videos.

⭐ Rich Results

I also fixed an issue with recipe ratings.

A small field name correction allowed Google to correctly detect:

Aggregate Rating
Rating Count
Review Snippets

After validation, Google now recognizes:

✅ Recipe Rich Results
✅ Breadcrumbs
✅ Review Snippets
✅ Validation

I tested the project using Schema Validator and Google's Rich Results Test.

Everything now validates successfully without critical errors.

💡 What I Learned

SEO isn't something to add at the end of a project.

It's part of the architecture.

Implementing structured data, technical SEO, and proper metadata makes an application easier to discover, easier to understand, and more professional.

Today's work brought my Django Food Blog much closer to a production-ready application.

The next step is continuing to improve performance, accessibility, and user experience.

Thanks for following the journey! 🚀

python #django #seo #webdev

Completing the Core SEO Foundation of My Django Food Blog

Arslon Erkinov — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:22:00 +0000

Today I focused on something that every production-ready web application needs but many side projects overlook—technical SEO.

Over the last few development sessions, I implemented all the core SEO components for my Django Food Blog, and today I completed the foundation.

✅ SEO Features Now Implemented
Dynamic Title
Meta Description
Canonical URL
Open Graph Metadata
Twitter Card
Sitemap.xml
Robots.txt
Schema.org Recipe Structured Data
Why these features matter

Adding these features improves much more than search rankings.

The application now:

Helps search engines crawl and index pages efficiently.
Prevents duplicate content with canonical URLs.
Generates rich previews when recipes are shared on social media.
Uses structured data (Schema.org Recipe) so search engines better understand recipe content.
Provides a stronger technical foundation for future growth.
What I learned

Modern web development isn't only about building features.

A production-ready application also needs proper SEO, metadata, structured data, and discoverability.

These improvements may be invisible to most users, but they play a huge role in making an application professional and ready for real-world deployment.

What's next?

With the technical SEO foundation complete, I'll continue improving the Food Blog by focusing on new features, performance optimization, and preparing the project for production deployment.

Thanks for following my journey! 🚀

python #django #seo #webdev

Adding sitemap.xml and robots.txt

Arslon Erkinov — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 22:19:05 +0000

Today I shifted my focus from building features to improving the technical SEO of my Django project.

A web application isn't truly complete if search engines can't efficiently discover and index its content.

✅ What I implemented
📄 sitemap.xml

I added a dynamic sitemap.xml to my Django application.

This allows search engines to:

Discover all public recipe pages
Crawl new content more efficiently
Improve indexing of the website
🤖 robots.txt

I also created a robots.txt file to guide search engine crawlers.

The configuration:

Allows access to public pages
Includes a reference to the sitemap
Helps search engines understand the website structure
💡 Why I added these features

As developers, we often focus on functionality and UI.

But technical SEO is just as important if you want users to actually find your application.

Adding sitemap.xml and robots.txt is a small task that can have a significant impact on how search engines crawl and index a website.

It's one more step toward making this Django project production-ready.

🚀 What's next?
Improve metadata for recipes
Add Open Graph and Twitter Cards
Continue optimizing performance
Prepare the project for deployment

Thanks for following my development journey!

python #django #seo #webdev

Today's Progress — Building My Django Food Blog

Arslon Erkinov — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 20:49:45 +0000

Today I implemented one of the features I wanted for a long time: "You May Also Like" recommendations.

The goal was simple—help users discover more recipes without leaving the recipe page while keeping the implementation clean and maintainable.

🍽️ What I built today

✅ Added a "You May Also Like" section on the recipe detail page.

The feature automatically:

Finds recipes from the same category
Excludes the current recipe
Limits the results to three recommendations
Displays the section only when similar recipes are available

⚙️ Backend Improvements

I updated the recipe_detail view to:

Query recipes by category
Exclude the current recipe
Pass similar_recipes to the template

🏗️ Better Template Architecture

While implementing the feature, I discovered a recursive template include issue.
To solve it, I reorganized the templates:
recipe_detail.html is now responsible only for the recommendation section
recipe_card.html contains only a single reusable recipe card

This makes the project much cleaner, easier to maintain, and more scalable.

🐛 Bug Fix

I also tracked down why recipe cards were being duplicated.

The problem turned out to be an incorrect template structure that caused nested includes.

After refactoring, everything renders correctly.

🎨 UI Improvements

The recommendation cards now match the rest of the website with:

Responsive grid layout
Recipe image
Rating
Hover animations
Consistent design system

💡 One thing I enjoy about Django development is that building a feature often leads to improving the architecture as well. Today's work wasn't just about adding recommendations—it was also about making the codebase cleaner and more reusable.

Every feature is another step toward turning this project into a production-ready application.

Python #Django #FullStack #BackendDevelopment #WebDevelopment

SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareDeveloper #Programming

OpenSource #BuildInPublic #Tech #Coding

TailwindCSS #JavaScript #HTML #CSS

ResponsiveDesign #UIUX #FoodTech

GitHub #Developer #LearningInPublic

Google #Microsoft #Amazon #Meta #Netflix #Spotify #OpenAI

Rebuilding My Django Food Blog: A Complete UI/UX Redesign

Arslon Erkinov — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:52:02 +0000

Today wasn't about adding new features.

Instead, I made one of the biggest decisions for my Food Blog Platform—to completely redesign the application from the ground up.

As developers, it's easy to keep adding functionality, but sometimes the best decision is to stop and rethink the user experience.

🎨 A New Design Philosophy

The previous version worked well, but it had become visually heavy and difficult to maintain.

So I decided to move to a completely different approach:

🌞 Light theme instead of a dark interface
✨ Minimalist design
📱 Mobile-first responsive layout
🧹 Cleaner HTML templates
🔧 Easier long-term maintenance

The goal wasn't just to make the application look better—it was to make the codebase cleaner and more scalable.

🏠 Homepage

The homepage received a complete redesign.

Improvements
New navigation header
Modern recipe cards
Simplified Featured Recipe section
Compact category blocks
Cleaner pagination
Better responsive behavior

Everything now feels lighter and much easier to navigate.

📖 Recipes Page

I completely redesigned the recipes page.

Changes
Modern recipe grid
Simpler category filters
New recipe cards
Compact pagination

The page is now cleaner and puts the focus where it belongs—on the recipes.

👤 Profile Page

The profile page also received a complete makeover.

New features
Minimalist profile layout
Redesigned user card
Better social links section
Improved mobile responsiveness
⚙️ Settings

The settings page was rebuilt with usability in mind.

Improvements
Cleaner layout
Better form styling
Improved avatar section
Responsive design
📄 About Page

I rewrote the About page from scratch.

Added:

Better project description
About Me section
Features overview
GitHub & LinkedIn links
New Call-to-Action section

Removed:

Large hero sections
Heavy gradients
Unnecessary visual effects

Sometimes removing elements improves the product more than adding new ones.

📊 Dashboard

The dashboard received one of the biggest updates.

What's new?
New dashboard header
Redesigned statistics cards
Better Saved Recipes section
Better Favorite Recipes section
Much cleaner HTML templates
Fixed markup issues
Unified design language

The dashboard is now much easier to maintain and extend.

❤️ Favorites

I also prepared the Favorites system to replace JavaScript actions with standard Django POST forms.

This keeps the application closer to Django's philosophy and reduces frontend complexity.

The only remaining task is updating the toggle_favorite view so the new Remove button works correctly.

📱 Mobile Experience

One of the biggest architectural decisions today was removing the traditional hamburger menu.

Instead, I decided to implement a Bottom Navigation for mobile devices.

The mobile navigation will include:

🏠 Home
📖 Recipes
❤️ Saved
👤 Profile
⚙️ Settings

Desktop users will continue using the top navigation.

I believe this will provide a much better mobile experience.

💡 What I Learned

Today reminded me that software development isn't only about adding features.

Sometimes the biggest improvement comes from simplifying the interface, reducing technical debt, and making the application easier to use and maintain.

A redesign isn't just about aesthetics—it's about creating a stronger foundation for everything you'll build next.

🚀 What's Next?
Finish the Favorites POST workflow
Continue polishing the new design system
Improve mobile navigation
User authentication improvements
Prepare the project for deployment

Thanks for following my journey.

Every commit brings this project one step closer to becoming a real production-ready application.

Happy coding! 🚀

Daily Dev Log — Building My Food Blog Platform

Arslon Erkinov — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 14:03:49 +0000

Today I continued working on my Food Blog Platform, a Django project that I'm building to improve my full-stack development skills while creating a real-world application.

Instead of focusing on adding a brand-new feature, today's work was dedicated to improving the existing foundation.

Today's work
Refined backend architecture for better maintainability
Improved recipe browsing and overall usability
Optimized performance in several parts of the application
Fixed bugs discovered during testing
Continued polishing the user interface

Today's lesson

One thing I've learned from this project is that software development is rarely about writing thousands of lines of new code every day.

Many productive days are spent improving code quality, fixing small issues, and making the application more reliable.

Those improvements may be invisible to users, but they are essential for long-term success.

Next milestones
User authentication
Favorite recipes
User profiles
Deployment to a production server

Final thoughts
The goal isn't simply to finish a project.
The goal is to build something maintainable, scalable, and enjoyable to use.

One improvement at a time.

See you in tomorrow's dev log!

Food Blog Platform — Daily Dev Log

Arslon Erkinov — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:56:20 +0000

Another day, another step forward on my Food Blog Platform.

Today's work was focused on strengthening the project's foundation rather than introducing new features.

What I worked on
Improved backend code structure and readability
Optimized recipe search and filtering
Fixed bugs and edge cases found during testing
Improved UI consistency throughout the application
Continued refining the overall user experience
What I learned today

As projects become larger, maintainability becomes just as important as functionality.

Spending time on refactoring and optimization may not be the most visible work, but it pays off every time you add a new feature later.

Clean code is an investment in the future of the project.

Next goals
User authentication system
Favorite recipes
User profiles
Production deployment
Final thoughts

Building software isn't about making giant leaps every day.

It's about making small improvements consistently, learning from each challenge, and creating something that becomes better with every commit.

See you in the next dev log! 🚀

Food Blog Platform — Daily Dev Log

Arslon Erkinov — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:15:22 +0000

Today's development session wasn't about adding a big feature—it was about making the project stronger.

As the application grows, I find myself spending more time improving the existing architecture than writing brand-new functionality. And honestly, that's where a lot of real software engineering happens.

What I worked on today
Improved backend organization and readability
Refined recipe search and filtering logic
Fixed small bugs and edge cases
Improved UI consistency across different pages
Continued optimizing the overall user experience
What I learned

Building software is a balance between creating new features and maintaining existing ones.

Every refactor makes the next feature easier to build.

Every bug fixed makes the application more reliable.

Every optimization improves the experience for future users.

What's next?
User authentication
Favorite recipes
User profiles
Production deployment
Final thoughts

It's easy to celebrate new features.

It's harder—but just as important—to celebrate cleaner code, better architecture, and a smoother user experience.

Those are the improvements that transform a side project into a real product.

Thanks for following along on this journey! 🚀

Building a Food Blog Platform with Django — Day by Day

Arslon Erkinov — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:27:20 +0000

Today's development session was all about improving the quality of the project rather than adding flashy new features.

As the application grows, I'm spending more time polishing the existing codebase and preparing it for future functionality.

What I worked on today

Refactored backend code to improve readability
Optimized recipe search and filtering
Improved UI consistency throughout the application
Fixed several small bugs and edge cases
Continued improving the overall user experience

What I learned

One thing I'm realizing during this project is that writing maintainable code is an investment.

Every refactor completed today will make future features easier to build and much easier to maintain.

Good software isn't just about adding features—it's about building a strong foundation that can grow over time.

What's next?

Authentication system
Favorite recipes
User profiles
Deployment to production
Final thoughts

Some of the most valuable development days are the ones where users won't immediately notice the changes.

Those improvements are often what make an application feel reliable, fast, and professional.

See you in tomorrow's dev log! 🚀

python #django #webdev #fullstack #buildinpublic #devlog #100DaysOfCode #softwareengineering