Zona is a tool for building a static website, optimized for lightweight blogs following minimalist design principles.
Note
Zona is currently in development. The main branch of this repository
does not yet contain the software. The dev-stable branch contains the code
used to generate ficd.ca -- although the program is
undocumented and missing features, so please proceed at your own risk. The
dev branch contains the latest development updates and is not guaranteed to
be functional (or even compile) at any given commit. Kindly note that the
commit history will be cleaned up before the program is merged into the main
branch.
Zona is intended to be easy-to-use. A user should be able to build a reasonably complex website or blog with only a directory of Markdown content and a single command, without needing to write any HTML or configuration. However, users should optionally have access to sensible and flexible configuration options, including writing HTML. The output of Zona should also be lightweight, retaining the smallest file sizes possible. These characteristics make Zona well-suited for both beginners and power users that wish to host a website on a service like Neocities or GitHub Pages.
- Write pages purely in Markdown.
- Single-command build process.
- Lightweight output.
- Sensible default template and stylesheet.
- Configuration file.
- Internal links preserved.
- Custom image element parsing & formatting.
- Site header and footer defined in Markdown.
- YAML frontmatter support.
- Automatically treat contents of
posts/directory as blog posts. - Automatically generated
Archive,Recent Posts, andImage Gallery[ ] elements. - Support for custom stylesheets, favicons, and page templates.
- Image optimization and dithering.
- Custom markdown tags that expand to user-defined templates.
- Live preview server.
- Robust tests.
Note: I am aware of
Zola, and the similar name is entirely a coincidence. I have never used it, nor read its documentation, thus it is not listed as an inspiration.