See the threads and my comments at:
- Django Deploying Help
especially the link for How To Set Up Django with Postgres, Nginx, and Gunicorn on Ubuntu | DigitalOcean - Hosting my first Django/React App
Short version, yes, deploying Django properly is confusing, precisely because there are so many different ways of deploying it and the software used to do so.
(Just off the top of my head, I’d say I’ve deployed Django in at least 5 different ways, all different depending upon the target environment involved. That’s with and without docker; uwsgi, gunicorn, and even Werkzeug in a couple of very limited-target environments; both Apache and nginx; and that’s not even beginning to count the different configurations I’ve played with in a test lab environment.)
A big problem occurs when you go searching through the internet trying to find answers, and you start finding conflicting information. It’s not even necessarily the case that one person is wrong where the other is right - they both can be correct. But this doesn’t help when you’re trying to work through issues in areas you’re not yet familiar with.
In general, my advice is always “go with what you know” at first. Try to minimize the number of unknowns that you will need to deal with, unless you’re working from a functional starting point.