Abridge is a fast, lightweight theme for the Zola static site generator, built on the abridge.css semantic HTML framework, designed to produce static websites that score perfectly on Lighthouse, YellowLabTools, and Observatory audits.
What is Abridge Zola Theme?
Abridge is a theme for Zola, the Rust-based static site generator. It takes Markdown content and a TOML configuration file and outputs a static website with features such as PWA support, offline search, multi-language support, and KaTeX math rendering. The theme is maintained by Jieiku and contributors on GitHub and is licensed under the MIT license. It requires Zola version 0.19.1 or later.
Key Features
- Perfect audit scores — The theme is designed to achieve perfect scores on Google Lighthouse, YellowLabTools, and Mozilla Observatory.
- PWA support — Progressive Web App support enables offline use; setting
search_library = "offline"makes the entire site work offline. - Disableable JavaScript — All JavaScript can be disabled; search is the only feature that relies on JavaScript.
- Multiple search libraries — Choose between elasticlunr, pagefind, or tinysearch, with keyboard navigation:
/focuses search, arrow keys move, enter selects, escape closes. - Theming options — Dark, light, auto, and switcher themes, with colors customizable via CSS variables.
- Code block features — Numbered code blocks, line highlighting, and a copy button for code snippets.
- Rich shortcodes — Includes YouTube, Vimeo, Streamable, video, image, imgswap, gif, audio, and KaTeX shortcodes.
- Content organization — Archive page, tags, categories (disabled by default), pagination, table of contents, and recent posts block.
Who is it for?
- Zola users who want a ready-made theme focused on performance and accessibility.
- Bloggers who need multi-language posts, tags, archive pages, and search.
- Documentation maintainers who benefit from offline search and PWA capabilities.
- Privacy-conscious developers who prefer minimal JavaScript and the option to disable it entirely.
What can you do with it?
- Technical bloggers: write Markdown posts with code blocks, KaTeX math, and rich media shortcodes.
- Documentation sites: build a searchable, offline-capable docs site using pagefind or tinysearch.
- Personal sites: set up a responsive blog with dark/light theme switching and social icons in the footer.
How does Abridge work?
Clone the repository, copy the provided config.toml and Sass overrides to your project root, then run zola serve. The theme supports installation as a git submodule or a direct clone, and includes a Netlify deployment config.
Pricing
Abridge is free and open source under the MIT license.
FAQ
Is Abridge free?
Yes, Abridge is released under the MIT license, so it is free to use, modify, and distribute.
What Zola version does Abridge require?
Abridge requires Zola version 0.19.1 or later to work correctly.
Does Abridge work without JavaScript?
Yes, all JavaScript can be fully disabled. The only feature that requires JavaScript is search.
