Moving a Django project from a local development environment to a production server on Digital Ocean can be daunting for beginners. This comprehensive guide walks you through every step of the process, from setting up an Ubuntu droplet to configuring Gunicorn as your application server. We will discuss why Nginx is essential as a reverse proxy to handle static files and load balancing, and how to secure your application using free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt. Finally, we cover troubleshooting common 502 Bad Gateway errors and optimizing server RAM usage.