If you're looking to dive into web development, Django is one of the best frameworks to start with. Developed in Python, Django emphasizes rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. To begin your journey, we recommend breaking it down into a few key steps:

1. Install Python and Django on your local machine.
2. Familiarize yourself with basic Django concepts such as models, views, and templates.
3. Build a simple project to apply what you've learned.

As you progress, consider exploring Django's rich ecosystem of packages, which can help enhance your application's functionality. Additionally, embrace best practices such as maintaining code readability and working with version control systems like Git. Remember, web development is an ongoing learning process, so stay curious and practice consistently to become proficient in using Django effectively.

Django is a powerful web framework that simplifies the development process for building robust web applications. To enhance your development experience, here are the Top 10 Django Packages Every Developer Should Know:

1. Django REST Framework - This is an essential toolkit for building Web APIs, providing features like serialization and authentication.
2. Celery - A task queue that allows for asynchronous processing, making it perfect for handling tasks in the background.
3. Django Allauth - A registration, account management, and social authentication solution for Django.
4. Django Debug Toolbar - A configurable set of panels that display various debug information about the current request/response cycle.
5. Django Crispy Forms - This package helps to manage your forms with a new approach to rendering and styling.
6. Django Channels - Enables the handling of WebSockets and background tasks, extending Django beyond HTTP.
7. django-filter - A powerful library that helps simplify the process of filtering querysets in your views.
8. Django Guardian - Provides per-object permissions for your models, enhancing your application's security.
9. django-webpack-loader - A bridge between Django and webpack, enabling the integration of modern JavaScript tooling.
10. dj-rest-auth - An excellent package to handle authentication for REST APIs in Django.

Building a RESTful API using Django and Django REST Framework is an efficient way to create scalable web services. To start, ensure you have Python and Django installed on your system. You can create a new Django project by running django-admin startproject projectname. Once your project is set up, navigate into your project directory and create a new app by executing python manage.py startapp appname. This will allow you to organize your API functionality independently. Remember to add your new app to the INSTALLED_APPS list in the settings.py file.

After setting up your Django app, install the Django REST Framework by adding it to your INSTALLED_APPS. Create your models in models.py and run python manage.py makemigrations followed by python manage.py migrate to set up your database. Then, define your serializers in serializers.py to convert your model instances into JSON. Next, create a view in views.py that combines your models and serializers, utilizing APIView or the more specialized GenericAPIView classes. Finally, set up your URLs in urls.py to make your API accessible. With the RESTful API correctly configured, you can now send HTTP requests to manage your data seamlessly.