How do you use Python to make websites?

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Michael R. Bernstein

1. Look at (and become bewildered by) the large number of Python Web Frameworks available.
2. Decide you're going to pick a framework based on popularity, and select Django [1].
3. Become frustrated when Django (even with the available add-on libraries) doesn't fit your intended type of site exactly (you aren't building a CMS, after all), and decide to try some other frameworks.
4. Decide that none of the other frameworks (even the ones that fit your intended use better) are well enough supported / a good enough fit / small enough to understand / etc., so you decide to create your own framework that does exactly what you need.
5. Realize, after maintaining your own framework for a while, that hey, maybe you could release it as open source to spread the maintenance burden around a bit[2].
6. Notice that maintaining an open source project is kinda hard work, and you're not really getting a lot of help, just complaints about missing documentation.
7. Realize that for the same effort, you could have been adding documentation or 3rd-party libraries for an existing framework and you could have had the best of both worlds. Pick the Pyramid[3] framework as the project to merge with / switch to / join because it leaves you with the greatest degree of freedom.
8. Occasionally still build a site with Django, because after all, the CMS-like use cases it is designed for are actually pretty common, and it does have a large and active community.

[1] At one point, the answer here would have been Zope or Plone
[2] Notice how #5 contributes to the problem in #1.
[3] Depending on your actual use-case, your answer here might be very different such as Flask, Twisted, Tornado , or any number of other Python Web Frameworks each with it's own sweet spot.



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