What Zola Does
- Single binary — everything built in, no plugins needed
- Tera templates — Jinja2-like templating
- Sass compilation — built in
- Syntax highlighting — via syntect
- Search index — generates Elasticlunr.js index
- Image processing — resize, crop, format conversion
- Shortcodes — reusable content snippets
- Taxonomies — tags, categories, custom
- Multilingual — i18n support
- Table of contents — auto-generated per page
- Anchors — auto-generated heading anchors
- RSS/Atom feeds — built in
Comparison
| Generator | Binary | Sass | Search | Images |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zola | Single | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in |
| Hugo | Single | Via pipe | External | Built-in |
| Jekyll | Ruby + gems | Via gem | Plugin | Plugin |
| Eleventy | Node.js | Plugin | Plugin | Plugin |
FAQ
Q: Zola vs Hugo? A: Hugo has a larger ecosystem (400+ themes, bigger community) and faster builds (for extremely large sites). Zola has more built-in features (Sass, search, image processing with no extra setup) and simpler configuration. For small-to-medium sites, pick Zola; for large sites, Hugo.
Q: Themes? A: https://www.getzola.org/themes/ has 100+ themes. You can also start from scratch with Tera templates.
Sources
- Docs: https://www.getzola.org/documentation
- GitHub: https://github.com/getzola/zola
- License: MIT