Templates and static files

What this episode covers

Where the welcome page lives and how to delete it properly; how Wagtail finds a template from the model name, and the two places templates can live; and a real base.html with a header, main and footer, keeping the generated bits that are worth keeping.

Then the template work itself: pageurl, slugurl and the richtext filter, why you should never build links from url_path, and listing child pages with get_children.live straight from the page tree.

Plus the ten-minute trap nobody warns you about: you write your CSS, reload, and the page is still completely unstyled — with nothing wrong with your code. We cover why studio.css ships at 0 bytes, how {% static %} resolves it, and the browser-cache trap, with proof of what is actually happening.

No build step, no framework, no Node. Plain CSS, hand-written, for the whole series.

Chapters

1. 0:00 Four episodes in, still an egg
2. 0:16 Where the welcome page lives
3. 0:30 How Wagtail finds a template
4. 0:46 Two places templates live
5. 1:06 base.html — keep the head
6. 1:23 Header, main, footer
7. 1:35 pageurl, slugurl, richtext
8. 1:58 Never build links from url_path
9. 2:14 Listing child pages from the tree
10. 2:32 The stylesheet that ships empty
11. 2:56 static and STATICFILES_DIRS
12. 3:14 You write the CSS. Nothing changes.
13. 3:30 What's actually happening
14. 3:52 Hard-reload
15. 4:09 The result
16. 4:22 The About page
17. 4:36 One media query
18. 4:50 Why the 404 page hasn't changed
19. 5:09 Commit and tag
20. 5:12 Next episode

Versions on screen

Wagtail 7.4.3 · Django 6.1.1 · Python 3.12. Recorded on Windows; macOS and Linux commands are in the repository for every episode.