2025-11-05

Is probably what you're thinking. If I went through the trouble of using Github Pages to host my portfolio, then why on earth did I use Zola and not Jekyll, which Github Pages handles natively? That's a pretty good question.

I've seen quite a few developers comment on why they chose Zola as their SSG of choice when self-hosting/deploying their websites, so I decided to take a crack at it too. So,

why zola?

1. I couldn't figure out Eleventy.

Eleventy was actually my first choice when it came to SSGs, but I guess I installed it at the least fortunate time-- right before a big version update was released-- that ended up completely breaking my installation of Eleventy. And yes, I did try the old "turn it off then turn it back on"; I think I installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled Eleventy around three times to no avail before I gave up.

At the time, I wasn't really aware of the differences between various popular SSGs; my webdev friends used Eleventy, so I figured that I could use it too and ask them for help