Quick start

Create a minimal site with optional docs, blog, search and feed support.

This guide creates a small but complete demo site. It assumes you already have a Zola site and followed Install and update to place the theme under themes/devlab-theme.

Configure Zola

Use this as a starting zola.toml:

base_url = "https://example.com"
title = "DevLab"
description = "Developer documentation and technical notes."
author = "Your name"
theme = "devlab-theme"

compile_sass = true
build_search_index = true
generate_feeds = true
feed_filenames = ["atom.xml"]
exclude_paginated_pages_in_sitemap = "all"

[search]
include_title = true
include_description = true
include_content = true

[markdown]

[markdown.highlighting]
light_theme = "github-light"
dark_theme = "github-dark"

[extra.devlab.brand]
logo_text = "DevLab"
footer_text = "DevLab"
show_logo_mark = false
logo_mark_path = ""

[extra.devlab.footer]
note = ""
links = []

[extra.devlab.navigation]
links = [
  { name = "Home", path = "/" },
  { name = "Docs", path = "/docs/", kind = "docs" },
  { name = "Blog", path = "/blog/", kind = "blog" },
]

[extra.devlab.docs]
section = "docs/_index.md"
path = "/docs/"
get_started_path = "/docs/getting-started/"

[extra.devlab.blog]
path = "/blog/"

[extra.devlab.appearance]
default_mode = "system"
show_toggle = true

[extra.devlab.search]
index = "search_index.en.js"

[extra.devlab.seo]
og_image = ""

Do not need docs or blog yet? Leave the corresponding values under extra.devlab.docs or extra.devlab.blog empty and remove the matching navigation link.

Create content folders

Create the folders used by the default navigation:

mkdir -p content/docs content/blog

The minimal structure should look like this:

content/
  _index.md
  docs/
    _index.md
    getting-started.md
    Linux/
      _index.md
      opensuse.md
  blog/
    _index.md
    hello.md

Directories under content/docs/ become expandable documentation groups when they include _index.md.

Home page

Create content/_index.md:

+++
title = "DevLab"
description = "A developer documentation site."
+++

Build technical documentation and blogs with Zola.

The homepage uses templates/index.html automatically for the root section.

Docs section

Create content/docs/_index.md:

+++
title = "Documentation"
description = "Guides and reference pages."
sort_by = "weight"
template = "docs.html"
page_template = "doc-page.html"
+++

Start here.

The template setting controls the docs overview page. The page_template setting controls every page inside the docs section.

Create content/docs/getting-started.md:

+++
title = "Getting started"
description = "Start using the project."
weight = 1
+++

This page verifies that documentation rendering works.

## Requirements

- Zola
- Git

## Local development

Run:

```bash
zola serve
```

Blog section

Create content/blog/_index.md:

+++
title = "Blog"
description = "Release notes and technical articles."
sort_by = "date"
template = "blog.html"
page_template = "blog-page.html"
+++

Create content/blog/hello.md:

+++
title = "Hello DevLab"
description = "First blog post."
date = 2026-06-01
+++

This post verifies that blog rendering works.

Run the site

Start the development server:

zola serve

Check these pages:

  • /
  • /docs/
  • /docs/getting-started/
  • /blog/
  • /blog/hello/

If search is enabled, type at least two characters in the search field. If search is disabled, the search box and search scripts are not rendered.

The build also creates /atom.xml, /404.html and favicon.svg. Search engines and feed readers discover the feed and metadata from the page head.