Reddit mentions of Two Scoops of Django 1.11: Best Practices for the Django Web Framework

There's no reason that data rich applications can't be rendered server side. It just takes a little bit more thought. Basecamp is a Rails app but it's a great example. I'd look into how it is setup and see if you can't replicate that using Django. I know that you can use the Turbolinks library that they use with Django it just requires a Middleware to set the headers it requires. You might also pick up Two Scoops of Django and read the sections on templating best practices.

I have come to learn in my self-teaching journey that once you start looking for "more than the basics", it's time to start working on a project you will go hard at, and as you continue to make progress and come up with new ideas, new questions will arise, more problems and roadblocks will show up and by solving those is how you go beyond the basics.

That has been my approach though, there might be a magical recipe out there. In any case, people will probably recommend Two Scoops of Django. I, however, haven't read the book.

Two Scoops of Django by /u/pydanny is kind of a bible of django best practices

also, read the code of djangoproject.com and look at their app structure

Outdated book. https://www.amazon.com/Two-Scoops-Django-1-11-Practices/dp/0692915729