switching from jekyll to zola

2020: discovering jekyll

For applying to my master's program in 2020, a portfolio was required, and since it was more or less for a design program, I wanted to have a nice website. After trying for a month to get what I wanted out of WordPress, and angrily quitting multiple times, I discovered Jekyll. Back then, Hugo and 11ty were the newer kids on the block, but I was heavily relying on the free hosting from GitHub Pages, where Jekyll was the easiest to integrate.

Back then, looking for inspiration, I had an ethics professor I really liked, and he had a Jekyll site with the Minimal Mistakes theme. Prof. Mühlhoff

I went about using Minimal Mistakes, and it was a great experience. The resulting portfolio at least got me into the master's, and I fell in love with the general idea of being able to write sites in markdown, while a program would take care of the rest.

For years, Jekyll was my go-to for building static websites. It was familiar, widely supported, and part of the broader Ruby ecosystem. But over time, my frustrations grew—slow builds, complicated plugin setups, and a dependency stack that never felt quite right. To be honest, many of the drawbacks were totally not Jekyll’s fault. It was just slow, otherwise fine. But especially using GitHub Pages imposed quite a few limitations on plugins and themes. Also, maybe I didn’t put in enough effort, but I could never really get theme modifications working. Just extending the theme to show multiple authors was a pain—although it was eventually working.

On now finishing the master's, I wanted a visual overhaul, and while browsing for inspiration again, using Jekyll at all got questioned again. I knew I wanted a static site generator, because markdown is the shit. So after looking around further, Zola emerged—actually through a chatbot suggestion 😄

Recently, I made the leap to Zola, a Rust-powered static site generator, and I don't see myself going back.

rust feels right

I’ve always admired Rust for its speed, safety, and modern tooling. Using a static site generator built with Rust just made sense. Zola is fast—blazing fast. Even during local development, rebuilds are near-instant, and that alone makes the writing process smoother and more enjoyable.

Plus, using something written in Rust means fewer external dependencies, no bundler hell, and zero Ruby setup headaches. I can just download the binary, run it, and get going. It respects my time.

zola is thoughtfully designed

Beyond performance, Zola is just really well designed. Its template syntax (thanks to Tera) is more powerful and readable than Liquid. The built-in shortcodes, pagination, and asset pipelines all feel cohesive and purposeful. There’s very little “configuration over convention” fatigue that Jekyll often gave me.

And even though both systems are markdown-based, migrating wasn’t just a matter of copy-pasting files. I had to rethink frontmatter, adjust templates, and wrangle image paths and shortcodes. The structure and behavior are different enough that it felt like a real rebuild—not just a port.

duckquill made me switch

The real catalyst, though? Duckquill, a stunning Zola theme built by Daudix. It struck the perfect balance between minimalism and elegance—exactly the aesthetic I wanted but could never quite achieve with Jekyll. Duckquill didn’t just make Zola usable for me; it made it irresistible.

What really sets Duckquill apart—beyond its clean typography and smart layout—is how well it supports a vision of digital autonomy. The theme comes with Mastodon-powered comments, allowing for lightweight, federated interaction without relying on big centralized platforms. This fits perfectly with my goal of reclaiming control through self-hosting. Whether it's running my own site, owning my content, or interacting through the fediverse, Duckquill reinforces those values rather than working against them. It’s a rare example of design and infrastructure aligning with personal principles.

final thoughts

Switching from Jekyll to Zola wasn’t effortless, but it was absolutely worth it. I now have a faster, more reliable, and better-looking site that’s easier to maintain and feels like it fits my tooling philosophy.

If you're feeling the weight of your current setup, maybe it's time to try Zola—and give Duckquill a spin while you're at it.