Creating a theme is exactly like creating a normal site with Zola, except you will want to use many Tera blocks to allow users to easily modify it.

Getting started§ 

As mentioned, a theme is just like any site; start by running zola init MY_THEME_NAME.

The only thing needed to turn that site into a theme is to add a theme.toml configuration file with the following fields:

name = "my theme name"
description = "A classic blog theme"
license = "MIT"
homepage = "https://github.com/Keats/zola-hyde"
# The minimum version of Zola required
min_version = "0.4.0"
# An optional live demo URL
demo = ""

# Any variable there can be overriden in the end user `config.toml`
# You don't need to prefix variables by the theme name but as this will
# be merged with user data, some kind of prefix or nesting is preferable
# Use snake_casing to be consistent with the rest of Zola
[extra]

# The theme author info: you!
[author]
name = "Vincent Prouillet"
homepage = "https://vincent.is"

# If this is porting a theme from another static site engine, provide
# the info of the original author here
[original]
author =  "mdo"
homepage = "http://markdotto.com/"
repo = "https://www.github.com/mdo/hyde"

A simple theme you can use as an example is Hyde.

Working on a theme§ 

As a theme is just a site, you can simply use zola serve and make changes to your theme, with live reload working as expected.

Make sure to commit every directory (including content) in order for other people to be able to build the theme from your repository.

Caveat§ 

Please note that include paths can only be used in normal templates. Theme templates should use macros instead.

If you want your theme to be featured in the section of this site, the theme will require two more things:

The first step is to make sure that the theme meets the following three requirements:

When your theme is ready, you can submit it to the themes repository by following the process in the README.