227 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
227 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
+++
|
|
title = "Overview"
|
|
weight = 5
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
## Zola at a Glance
|
|
|
|
Zola is a static site generator (SSG), similar to [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/), [Pelican](https://blog.getpelican.com/), and [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) (for a comprehensive list of SSGs, please see the [StaticGen](https://www.staticgen.com/) site). It is written in [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/) and uses the [Tera](https://tera.netlify.com/) template engine, which is similar to [Jinja2](https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/2.10.x/), [Django templates](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/topics/templates/), [Liquid](https://shopify.github.io/liquid/), and [Twig](https://twig.symfony.com/). Content is written in [CommonMark](https://commonmark.org/), a strongly defined, highly compatible specification of [Markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/).
|
|
|
|
SSGs use dynamic templates to transform content into static HTML pages. Static sites are thus very fast and require no databases, making them easy to host. A comparison between static and dynamic sites, such as WordPress, Drupal, and Django, can be found [here](https://dev.to/ashenmaster/static-vs-dynamic-sites-61f).
|
|
|
|
To get a taste of Zola, please see the quick overview below.
|
|
|
|
## First Steps with Zola
|
|
|
|
Unlike some SSGs, Zola makes no assumptions regarding the structure of your site. In this overview, we'll be making a simple blog site.
|
|
|
|
### Initialize Site
|
|
|
|
> This overview is based on Zola 0.9.
|
|
|
|
Please see the detailed [installation instructions for your platform](@/documentation/getting-started/installation.md). With Zola installed, let's initialize our site:
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
$ zola init myblog
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
You will be asked a few questions.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
> What is the URL of your site? (https://example.com):
|
|
> Do you want to enable Sass compilation? [Y/n]:
|
|
> Do you want to enable syntax highlighting? [y/N]:
|
|
> Do you want to build a search index of the content? [y/N]:
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
For our blog, let's accept the default values (i.e., press Enter for each question). We now have a `myblog` directory with the following structure:
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
├── config.toml
|
|
├── content
|
|
├── sass
|
|
├── static
|
|
├── templates
|
|
└── themes
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
For reference, by the **end** of this overview, our `myblog` directory will have the following structure:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
├── config.toml
|
|
├── content/
|
|
│ └── blog/
|
|
│ ├── _index.md
|
|
│ └── first.md
|
|
├── sass/
|
|
├── static/
|
|
├── templates/
|
|
│ ├── base.html
|
|
│ ├── blog-page.html
|
|
│ ├── blog.html
|
|
│ └── index.html
|
|
└── themes/
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Let's start the Zola development server with:
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
$ zola serve
|
|
Building site...
|
|
-> Creating 0 pages (0 orphan), 0 sections, and processing 0 images
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
> This command must be run in the base Zola directory, which contains `config.toml`.
|
|
|
|
If you point your web browser to <http://127.0.0.1:1111>, you should see a "Welcome to Zola" message.
|
|
|
|
### Home Page
|
|
|
|
Let's make a home page. To do this, let's first create a `base.html` file inside the `templates` directory. This step will make more sense as we move through this overview. We'll be using the CSS framework [Bulma](https://bulma.io/).
|
|
|
|
```html
|
|
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
|
<html lang="en">
|
|
|
|
<head>
|
|
<meta charset="utf-8">
|
|
<title>MyBlog</title>
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bulma@0.8.0/css/bulma.min.css">
|
|
</head>
|
|
|
|
<body>
|
|
<section class="section">
|
|
<div class="container">
|
|
{% block content %} {% endblock %}
|
|
</div>
|
|
</section>
|
|
</body>
|
|
|
|
</html>
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Now, let's create an `index.html` file inside the `templates` directory.
|
|
|
|
```html
|
|
{% extends "base.html" %}
|
|
|
|
{% block content %}
|
|
<h1 class="title">
|
|
This is my blog made with Zola.
|
|
</h1>
|
|
{% endblock content %}
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
This tells Zola that `index.html` extends our `base.html` file and replaces the block called "content" with the text between the `{% block content %}` and `{% endblock content %}` tags.
|
|
|
|
### Content Directory
|
|
|
|
Now let's add some content. We'll start by making a `blog` subdirectory in the `content` directory and creating an `_index.md` file inside it. This file tells Zola that `blog` is a [section](@/documentation/content/section.md), which is how content is categorized in Zola.
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
├── content
|
|
│ └── blog
|
|
│ └── _index.md
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
In the `_index.md` file, we'll set the following variables in [TOML](https://github.com/toml-lang/toml) format:
|
|
|
|
```md
|
|
+++
|
|
title = "List of blog posts"
|
|
sort_by = "date"
|
|
template = "blog.html"
|
|
page_template = "blog-page.html"
|
|
+++
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
> Note that although no variables are mandatory, the opening and closing `+++` are required.
|
|
|
|
* *sort_by = "date"* tells Zola to use the date to order our section pages (more on pages below).
|
|
* *template = "blog.html"* tells Zola to use `blog.html` in the `templates` directory as the template for listing the Markdown files in this section.
|
|
* *page_template = "blog-page.html"* tells Zola to use `blog-page.html` in the `templates` directory as the template for individual Markdown files.
|
|
|
|
For a full list of section variables, please see the [section](@/documentation/content/section.md) documentation. We will use *title = "List of blog posts"* in a template (see below).
|
|
|
|
### Templates
|
|
|
|
Let's now create some more templates. In the `templates` directory, create a `blog.html` file with the following contents:
|
|
|
|
```html
|
|
{% extends "base.html" %}
|
|
|
|
{% block content %}
|
|
<h1 class="title">
|
|
{{ section.title }}
|
|
</h1>
|
|
<ul>
|
|
{% for page in section.pages %}
|
|
<li><a href="{{ page.permalink | safe }}">{{ page.title }}</a></li>
|
|
{% endfor %}
|
|
</ul>
|
|
{% endblock content %}
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
As done by `index.html`, `blog.html` extends `base.html`, but this time we want to list the blog posts. The *title* we set in the `_index.md` file above is available to us as `{{ section.title }}`. In the list below the title, we loop through all the pages in our section (`blog` directory) and output the page title and URL using `{{ page.title }}` and `{{ page.permalink | safe }}`, respectively. We use the `| safe` filter because the permalink doesn't need to be HTML escaped (escaping would cause `/` to render as `/`).
|
|
|
|
If you go to <http://127.0.0.1:1111/blog/>, you will see the section page for `blog`. The list is empty because we don't have any blog posts. Let's fix that now.
|
|
|
|
### Markdown Content
|
|
|
|
In the `blog` directory, create a file called `first.md` with the following contents:
|
|
|
|
```md
|
|
+++
|
|
title = "My first post"
|
|
date = 2019-11-27
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
This is my first blog post.
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
The *title* and *date* will be available to us in the `blog-page.html` template as `{{ page.title }}` and `{{ page.date }}`, respectively. All text below the closing `+++` will be available to us as `{{ page.content }}`.
|
|
|
|
We now need to make the `blog-page.html` template. In the `templates` directory, create this file with the contents:
|
|
|
|
```html
|
|
{% extends "base.html" %}
|
|
|
|
{% block content %}
|
|
<h1 class="title">
|
|
{{ page.title }}
|
|
</h1>
|
|
<p class="subtitle"><strong>{{ page.date }}</strong></p>
|
|
{{ page.content | safe }}
|
|
{% endblock content %}
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
> Note the `| safe` filter for `{{ page.content }}`.
|
|
|
|
This should start to look familiar. If you now go back to our blog list page at <http://127.0.0.1:1111/blog/>, you should see our lonely post. Let's add another. In the `content/blog` directory, let's create the file `second.md` with the contents:
|
|
|
|
```md
|
|
+++
|
|
title = "My second post"
|
|
date = 2019-11-28
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
This is my second blog post.
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Back at <http://127.0.0.1:1111/blog/>, our second post shows up on top of the list because it's newer than the first post and we had set *sort_by = "date"* in our `_index.md` file. As a final step, let's modify our home page to link to our blog posts.
|
|
|
|
The `index.html` file inside the `templates` directory should be:
|
|
|
|
```html
|
|
{% extends "base.html" %}
|
|
|
|
{% block content %}
|
|
<h1 class="title">
|
|
This is my blog made with Zola.
|
|
</h1>
|
|
<p>Click <a href="/blog/">here</a> to see my posts.</p>
|
|
{% endblock content %}
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
This has been a quick overview of Zola. You can now dive into the rest of the documentation.
|