# Content shards

**URL:** <https://zola.discourse.group/t/content-shards/2661>\
**Category:** Feature requests\
**Created:** [July 22, 2025, 6:52am UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/content-shards/2661 "2025-07-22T06:52:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jonhurst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b782af/32.png) [@jonhurst](https://zola.discourse.group/u/jonhurst)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2025, 6:52am UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/content-shards/2661/1 "2025-07-22T06:52:03Z")

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[Issue #552 on github](https://github.com/getzola/zola/issues/552) requests sub-blocks within the .md file, but was closed without being implemented.

I suggest a simpler syntax for this:

```plaintext
+++
title = "Shard demo"
shard_marker = "-*-"
+++

Everything that goes here gets rendered out as normal and is available to the 
templates as page.content

If a user doesn't opt in by specifying a shard_marker, everything else gets 
rendered as normal and they wouldn't notice the feature.

-*- foo

The rendered html from this markdown is available to the templates as 
page.shards.foo[0]

-*- foo

The rendered html from this markdown is available to the templates as 
page.shards.foo[1]

-*- bar

The rendered html from this markdown is available to the templates as 
page.shards.bar[0]

```

An initial rough implementation is available [here](https://github.com/JonHurst/zola/tree/shards).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jonhurst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b782af/32.png) [@jonhurst](https://zola.discourse.group/u/jonhurst)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 4:01pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/content-shards/2661/2 "2025-07-27T16:01:39Z")

</div>

I’ve written this up as a more formal proposal [here](https://zola.discourse.group/t/proposal-for-sharding-of-markdown-content/2664), so please could an admin delete this post – I don’t appear have the rights to do so.

---

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**Author:** ![keats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/34f0e0/32.png) [@keats](https://zola.discourse.group/u/keats)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/content-shards/2661/3 "2025-07-29T17:45:48Z")

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