# Native and straightforward support for html

**URL:** <https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425>\
**Category:** Feature requests\
**Created:** [August 20, 2022, 9:56pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425 "2022-08-20T21:56:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![norbert](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/zola.discourse.group/norbert/32/810_2.png) [@norbert](https://zola.discourse.group/u/norbert)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2022, 9:56pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425/1 "2022-08-20T21:56:56Z")

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Both Jekyll and Hugo allow for html files instead of md. Would be great to see the same for Zola. I have just begun looking at zola and this caught my eye. Why it’s not natively supported? To use Zola without markdown at all? 🙂

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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:** [August 21, 2022, 6:11pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425/2 "2022-08-21T18:11:50Z")

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Markdown supports HTML by default, what changes except the extension?

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**Author:** ![norbert](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/zola.discourse.group/norbert/32/810_2.png) [@norbert](https://zola.discourse.group/u/norbert)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2022, 7:48pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425/3 "2022-08-21T19:48:01Z")

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The idea is that perhaps some people would like to use Zola with no markdown at all to minimize complexity. Using \*.md files looks messy in such a case. \*.html files would be the most clean solution that signals no dependency on markdown. Just sharing my first thoughts, I am sure you better understand the trade-offs and use-cases.

One example of the decision not to use markdown: [I’m rewriting my book in HTML instead of Markdown. Here’s why.](https://joshondesign.com/2019/06/28/markdown_vs_html) Another opinion: [What’s Wrong with Markdown? – Adam Hyde](https://www.adamhyde.net/whats-wrong-with-markdown/)

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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:** [August 24, 2022, 9:42am UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425/4 "2022-08-24T09:42:49Z")

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I see. There’s no plan to support that. You can just use an empty .md file like

```nohighlight
+++
+++

<div>
  Your HTML there
</div>

```

if you really want to. At this point there’s no need to use a SSG though

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**Author:** ![norbert](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/zola.discourse.group/norbert/32/810_2.png) [@norbert](https://zola.discourse.group/u/norbert)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2022, 10:15am UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425/5 "2022-08-24T10:15:17Z")

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SSG still seems to be necessary for includes (footer, header etc.), categories, tags and so on. Markdown is by no means the essence or the constitutive aspect of SSG. It just appeared to be a trivial feature to support html in a clean way. 🙂

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**Author:** ![jtojnar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/zola.discourse.group/jtojnar/32/846_2.png) [@jtojnar](https://zola.discourse.group/u/jtojnar)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2022, 2:02pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/native-and-straightforward-support-for-html/1425/6 "2022-10-30T14:02:14Z")

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The issue is that in Markdown, indentation means a code block, which makes it impossible to structure HTML files in a way that is readable. Or to embed e.g. API docs generated by another tool like is done here [SimplePie 1.3 API Documentation](http://simplepie.org/api/) (currently [trying to convert](https://github.com/simplepie/simplepie/pull/756) the site to SSG).
