Zola

Zola is a static site generator written in Rust that ships as a single binary with no external dependencies. There is no Node.js to install, no plugin ecosystem to configure, and no build pipeline to assemble — just a zola build command that takes Markdown content and Tera templates and produces a complete static site in milliseconds.

It is the tool used to build this very site.

Features

• Single binary — one file, no runtime dependencies, trivial to install on any machine or CI runner
• Built-in Sass compilation — write .scss files and they are compiled automatically; no node-sass or dart-sass required
• Built-in search index — set build_search_index = true in config.toml and Zola generates an Elasticlunr.js-compatible index for fully client-side full-text search
• Tera templates — a clean, Jinja2-compatible templating language; if you've used Jinja2, Django templates, or Nunjucks you'll feel immediately at home
• Taxonomies — define custom taxonomies (tags, categories, series…) and Zola auto-generates listing and detail pages for every term
• Shortcodes — embed custom HTML snippets in Markdown using a simple macro syntax
• Syntax highlighting — code blocks are highlighted at build time, with no client-side JavaScript required
• Multilingual sites — first-class support for multiple languages in a single site
• Link checking — zola check validates all internal and external links before you deploy
• Live reload — zola serve watches for changes, rebuilds incrementally, and reloads the browser automatically
• Feeds — generates Atom and RSS feeds automatically for any section

Installation

Download a pre-built binary from the releases page, or:

# macOS
brew install zola

# Debian / Ubuntu (Debian 12+)
apt install zola

# Fedora
dnf install zola

# Arch Linux
pacman -S zola

# Alpine Linux
apk add zola

# Snap
snap install zola --edge

# cargo
cargo install zola --locked

Quick Start

# Create a new site
zola init my-site
cd my-site

# Serve locally with live reload
zola serve

# Build to the public/ directory
zola build

# Check all links
zola check

Project Structure

my-site/
├── config.toml          # Site-wide configuration
├── content/             # Markdown content
│   ├── _index.md        # Homepage content
│   └── blog/
│       ├── _index.md    # Section config (template, sort order, etc.)
│       └── my-post.md
├── templates/           # Tera HTML templates
│   ├── base.html
│   ├── index.html
│   └── blog/
│       ├── list.html
│       └── single.html
├── static/              # Copied verbatim to public/
├── sass/                # Compiled to CSS automatically
└── public/              # Generated output (not committed)

Configuration

config.toml controls everything about the build:

base_url = "https://example.com"
title = "My Site"
description = "A site about things."
compile_sass = true
build_search_index = true

taxonomies = [
  { name = "tags", feed = true },
  { name = "categories" },
]

[markdown]
highlighting = { theme = "github-dark" }

[extra]
# Your own site-wide variables, accessible in all templates as config.extra.*
author = "Alice"

Page Frontmatter

Content files use TOML frontmatter:

+++
title = "My Post"
description = "A short summary shown in cards and meta tags."
date = 2024-06-01
draft = false

[taxonomies]
tags = ["rust", "web"]

[extra]
hero_image = "/images/hero.jpg"
+++

Your Markdown content goes here.

Templates

Tera templates have access to rich context variables:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block content %}
<h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
<p>{{ page.description }}</p>
{{ page.content | safe }}

{% if page.taxonomies.tags %}
  {% for tag in page.taxonomies.tags %}
    <a href="{{ get_taxonomy_url(kind="tags", name=tag) }}">{{ tag }}</a>
  {% endfor %}
{% endif %}
{% endblock %}

Deployment

zola build produces a self-contained public/ directory that can be hosted anywhere:

# GitHub Pages (via GitHub Actions)
- uses: shalzz/zola-deploy-action@v0.18.0
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

# Cloudflare Pages — set build command to:
zola build

# Netlify — set build command to:
zola build --base-url $DEPLOY_PRIME_URL