getzola/zola

Zola is a static site generator written in Rust. A static site generator takes your written content, usually Markdown files (plain text with simple formatting symbols), and converts them into a finished website of plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. Because the output is static (no server-side processing needed), the resulting site is very fast to serve and easy to host anywhere. Zola ships as a single binary file, meaning there is nothing extra to install or configure, you download one file and run it. Everything you need is already included: a template engine (called Tera), Sass compilation (Sass is a language that extends CSS with variables and reusable styles), syntax highlighting for code blocks, image processing, search functionality, table of contents generation, and live reload during development (the browser automatically refreshes as you edit files). It supports themes, multilingual content, pagination (splitting long lists of posts across multiple pages), custom taxonomies (ways to group content beyond simple categories and tags), and an external link checker to catch broken links. Built sites can be deployed easily to hosting platforms like Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Pages. You would use Zola if you want to build a blog, documentation site, or marketing site from Markdown files, and you want a fast, no-dependencies tool that handles everything without requiring you to install a complex ecosystem of other tools.