Create and publish a blog

Start from the Quick start site. Run the commands from the site root and keep the blog outside the theme directory.

1. Create the section

Create content/blog/_index.md:

+++
title = "Blog"
description = "Project notes and tutorials."
sort_by = "date"
paginate_by = 5
template = "blog.html"
page_template = "blog-page.html"
+++

Add { name = "Blog", path = "/blog/" } to your existing navigation links. Every post needs date because the section sorts by date. Posts without sorting data are excluded from the sorted list. Omit paginate_by to list all posts.

2. Register tags and authors

Add these settings to zola.toml before any tables. Extend an existing taxonomies array rather than declaring it twice:

author = "Alex Morgan"
generate_feeds = true
feed_filenames = ["atom.xml"]
taxonomies = [
  { name = "tags", paginate_by = 10 },
  { name = "authors", feed = true },
]

Create data/authors.toml:

[alex]
name = "Alex Morgan"
role = "Project maintainer"

The key alex connects a post to this record and its /authors/alex/ page. Known profiles require a non-empty name. Unknown keys fall back to their plain name. Blog authors covers avatars, links, multiple writers and profile feeds.

3. Write the first post

Create content/blog/first-post.md:

+++
title = "First project release"
description = "Install the first release and check its configuration."
date = 2026-10-06

[taxonomies]
tags = ["release", "installation"]
authors = ["alex"]
+++

## Install

Explain the command and its expected result.

## Check

Show how readers can verify the installation.

Use updated when you change the article after publication. extra.release adds an optional release badge. Prefer a short description for article lists and metadata. Without a description, a post's <!-- more --> summary supplies a plain-text list excerpt, limited to 280 characters. The full article keeps its Markdown formatting.

Tag links appear in lists and articles and lead to generated tag archives. Older/Newer links follow the containing section's date order. Set extra.devlab.blog.show_pagination = false in zola.toml to hide those links. Standalone articles outside a sorted section have no adjacent-post links.

4. Preview a draft

Set draft = true in the post front matter while writing. Run:

zola serve --drafts

Normal builds omit drafts. Remove the draft flag before publication. For a renamed route, use Zola's native aliases field to preserve old incoming links. Keep dated filenames and aliases site-owned. Zola's page front matter reference explains these native settings.

5. Verify and publish

zola check --skip-external-links
zola build
zola serve

Open /blog/, the article, /tags/release/, /authors/alex/, atom.xml and the author feed. Check dates, bylines, excerpts, tag links and Older/Newer links. Test the menu and search with a keyboard. A site under a path prefix must keep that prefix in article and asset links.

Follow Deploy a site to upload public/, then subscribe to the published feed to verify its URLs. Publication metadata and cache policy are covered in Publishing.