passthejoe by Steven Rosenberg - notetaking

Using the Obsidian notetaking app to write posts for Zola

2026-05-19T00:00:00+00:00
I've given quite a few notetaking apps a tryout in my quest to both find a smoother workflow for writing posts for static site generators like Zola and Hugo, and now it's Obsidian's turn. Or it's my turn at using Obsidian.
I did leave Obsidian for pretty much the end of my "journey" of trying every notetaking app I could find in Flathub.
Why did I leave Obsidian to the end? I've tried to prioritize apps that are coded in more traditional-to-linux/unix ways (i.e. not Electron or other Javascript cross-platform frameworks).
There even is a plugin to export Obsidian posts to blogs such as Hugo, Hexo and a few others. Like Obsidian itself, the plugin seems very complicated, with a lot of configuration options. The plugin also didn't work for me with the TOML front matter for a Zola post.
I didn't give up so easily. I found the Enhancing Export</a> plugin, which seemed promising.
The export appeared to go well. I got an .md</code> file exactly where I wanted it. However, all of the brackets in my TOML front matter were escaped with backslashes.
Instead of:
[taxonomies]</code>
it was:
\[taxonomies\]</code>
Why is it doing that? Who wants this?
I could spend many hours trying to figure out how to get it to export to go the way I want, but I'm not excited enough about the app to make the effort. If there were another plugin, or native functionality (which this really should be) to do the export the right way, that would be nice.
Note: This entry was copy/pasted into and exported out of Iotas</a> because that is one of the apps that exports the right way out of the box.


Is Standard Notes worth $90 to $120 a year?
2026-05-09T00:00:00+00:00
Right now I'm in working on this post in Standard Notes</a>, one of the free-to-paid cross-platform notetaking apps.</p>
You can export a text file and give it any suffix you want — even .md</code>, but this is a free/paid app, and you can only "see" Markdown rendered if you go to the first paid tier, called Productivity, which is $90. The Professional tier at $120 — a 33% increase over Productivity.</p>
I like the app. Without a paid membership, it's pretty basic. And despite the pay-to-play nature of most of the features that take it beyond the basic "it's a text editor with autosave," the app</a> is open source under the AGPL 3.0 license. On the project's home page</a>, under "Standard Notes," it says, "Powered by Proton," which I think refers to the Proton Native framework</a> to create desktop applications using the same syntax as React Native, and not carrying a whole browser along with it like an Electron app.</p>
Not only is the desktop app open-source, but so is the server, which is billed as "fully self-hostable."</p>
So on the surface, this seems like a better way to get a cross-platform, "native" desktop app. Better than Electron, I guess, though I'm not an expert. There's still a bit of a delay when starting the app on my 9-year-old HP laptop. It takes about 12 seconds to launch on this hardware. It could be better for you. Could be worse. But the app is very responsive once loaded.</p>
In addition to the desktop app, there's also a web app at https://app.standardnotes.com/, as well as apps for Android and iOS.</p>
In April I signed up for a free account to see what I could do with Standard Notes? And now that it's May, I got an email from Standard Notes reminding me about what the app includes for free accounts:</p>

Your free account comes with standard features like end-to-end encryption, multiple-device sync, and two-factor authentication.</p>
</blockquote>
Then it reminded me about what I'm missing by not subscribing for $90-$120/year.</p>
Right now I'm in this note and wanted to search for a word. I couldn't figure it out. Ctrl-F doesn't do it. It turns out that search isn't available in text</em> notes, the only kind you can create with the Free plan. You need to use Super Notes</em> in order to make them searchable</a>, and that's a paid feature.</p>
With most of the desktop notetaking apps I'm using, including Iotas and QOwnNotes, I can search for something in all the notes.</p>
At least I was able to switch to dark mode. I can also give a note any name I want, and it will export with that name as the file name. All I have to do is replace .txt</code> with .md</code>. So for static-site blogging with Zola and Hugo, this is a solid choice.</p>
The Standard Notes app also has a Command Palette. Is it related to the last app with this feature that I tried? This must be a feature from Obsidian, or one of the other paid notetaking apps because I've seen it a few times now.</p>
You can type Markdown in Standard Notes, but it doesn't render. Markdown rendering is available, but it costs.</p>
At the risk of repeating myself, here are Standard Notes' three available plans:</p>

Free</li>
Productivity: $90 per year</li>
Professional: $120 per year</li>
</ul>
If you commit to 5 years, you get a "break":</p>

Productivity: $299 for 5 years</li>
Professional: $349 for 5 years</li>
</ul>
If I loves this tool above all others, I'd pay. But I'm not sure.</p>
In addition to Markdown rendering, things like the ability to create checklists, spreadsheets, keep a daily journal, create folders and use a "Web Clipper" to save web pages as notes are all part of the $90 package. It's not a bad price, but it's hard to justify, especially if I can't test out all the features beforehand. Refunds are available within 14 days for the $90 Productivity plan and 90 days for the $120 Professional plan.</p>
Mimiri Notes</a> is at least somewhat comparable and only charges $12 per year. Standard Notes is objectively a better product, but is it $72 per year better?</p>
The problem</em> is that in that time, I've been exploring using a hosted Nextcloud account for notes and note sync. I have a free account with TheGood.Cloud</a> for the next six months, and after that it's only $28 a year. It doesn't have the "advanced" notetaking features of Standard Notes, but it's also a lot cheaper and allows me to use other apps on Android and desktop for notetaking, calendar and general file sync.</p>
I'm not ready yet to boot Standard Notes out of the running as my notetaking solution, but I don't know if I need what it's offering, and $90 is above what I'm willing to spend as an individual for this service.</p>


Iotas and Nextcloud Notes sync
2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00
One of the key features of the Iotas</a> notetaking app is the ability to sync with Nextcloud Notes</a>.</p>
I started a free-for-now Nextcloud account at https://thegood.cloud</a> to test this. Free</em> is a pretty good price for a 2 GB hosted Nextcloud account, and if I decide to stick with TheGood.Cloud after my 180-day trial, the service costs €23.88 per year for 10 GB. That's $28.11 USD. Not bad for a whole year. Unless I decide to start hosting some heavy duty files, I'll never get close to 10 GB. I can't even see getting to 1 GB.</p>
Once I got the Nextcloud account established, I went to Iotas and set up Nextcloud Sync. I was already logged in to TheGood.Cloud's web interface, and the sync immediately worked. I had the same notes in Iotas and Nextcloud.</p>
For most regular notes, including to-do lists, Nextcloud Notes is great. Writing and editing notes can be done in the Web interface as well as the Nextcloud and separate Nextcloud Notes</a> Android apps. It all works.</p>
The Nextcloud Notes Android app works a bit better for its own subset of Nextcloud than the overall Netxcloud app. I have both on the phone.</p>
And with all my notes in Iotas, I can export the individual Markdown-formatted notes to my Zola</a> blog's content directory on my laptop and then build and deploy the site. It would be the same for Hugo</a> with different front matter.</p>
After spending a few weeks looking at notetaking apps, I wasn't sure I needed syncing, but so far I'm doing quite a bit of writing on my phone. To that end, I found my old Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Both had severe battery corrosion, and the bin they went. It didn't matter. I'm using the phone and ... my fingers.</p>
When it comes to things like to-do lists, it's very</em> convenient to be able to access them on and sync them to mobile. Of course you can do this with Google Keep or other paid apps like Obsidian and Standard Notes, but there's a nice degree of flexibility with Nextcloud. You can use a hosted Nextcloud account, like I'm doing, or stand up your own Nextcloud server.</p>
The more I test the sync between Nextcloud's web view, mobile apps and my local notetaking apps, the more impressed I am with how well it works.</p>
In addition to blog posts and to-do lists, I'm also using the Notes app to save URLs I find when I'm on the phone. I just share a web page into Notes, and I can write about it later. I wish there was a way to do this with Nextcloud on the desktop.</p>
The main</em> problem I'm having with Iotas and Nextcloud Notes is about the rendering of Zola blog front matter</a>. I'm using tabs (which generally manifest themselves in my editors as spaces</em>) to preserve the TOML formatting, and Nextcloud Notes tends to strip out the spaces and some of the linefeeds. I haven't quite figured out this issue just yet, but I'm thinking about it.</p>


Why is it so hard (or impossible) to get a clean Markdown export out of Obsidian and Standard Notes?
2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00
What's the deal with exporting Markdown files out of two of the most popular notetaking apps, Obsidian and Standard Notes?</p>
Obsidian</a> can't (or more accurately won't) export an .md</code> file from the base system, and none of the plugins I've tried can do it right, which for me means without added escapes preceding the brackets that's are in my blog posts' TOML front matter.</p>
Standard Notes</a> doesn't even allow an export with the free plan.</p>
Meanwhile Nextcloud</a> offers file exports (in the form of downloads</em> via the Files app) just like the Linux desktop apps I've been using: Iotas</a>, QOwnNotes</a> and Folio</a>. And the files are ready to go into a static site generator, which in my case is Zola</a>.</p>


QOwnNotes and Iotas sync with Nextcloud in two different ways
2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00
I just found out that QOwnNotes</a> doesn't handle file sync with Nextcloud</a> in the same way as Iotas</a>.</p>
Instead, QOwnNotes relies on the Nextcloud desktop app</a> to sync the Markdown files generated by QOwnNotes with those on the Nextcloud server.</p>
I've already been thinking of testing the Nextcloud app, even though it's not needed for Iotas, which does the sync on its own with flat files on the Nextcloud side and an SQLite database for Iotas.</p>
I'd still like to see how well Nextcloud sync works. A reliable, Dropbox-like sync system would be pretty nice. Until recently, I had no idea that sync — or a separate app that does it — was even part of Nextcloud.</p>
Even if I get sync working for QOwnNotes and Nextcloud, I don't think that Nextcloud will recognize the tags that QOwnNotes can give to notes, though that would be nice.</p>
Despite the hurdle of syncing with Nextcloud, some of the things I appreciate about QOwnNotes are:</p>

Notes are stored in plain text files instead of a database</li>
Notes can be stored in nested folders</li>
Notes can be further categorized with multiple tags</li>
</ul>
In contrast, this is the situation for Iotas:</p>

Notes are stored in a SQLite database. They only "become" actual files if you export them.</li>
Notes can have a single category</em>. They can't have multiple categories, and there are no tags or folders, though a Category in Iotas mirrors a folder in Nextcloud.</li>
</ul>


Iotas is a GNOME Circle notetaking app that is a pretty good fit for writing blog posts
2026-04-29T00:00:00+00:00
I originally wrote this post a few weeks ago, and since then Iotas has been updated to resolve a bug that caused the app to crash when exporting a file. With that fix and a couple of small tweaks to Iotas' Flatpak sandbox and app permissions, everything is working a lot better. That makes Iotas a contender, along with QOwnNotes and Folio, for my go-to app for static-site blog posts, general notetaking and list-making.</em></p>
The rewritten review starts here:</em></p>
Iotas</a> is as good an app as any for writing notes</em>. And after an update from the developer and couple of extremely easy fixes on the user side, I got the app to successfully export a Markdown</em> file, both into the app's Flatpak sandbox</em> and the rest of my /home</code> directory.</p>
With the bug fix and tweaks in place, Iotas is a true contender for writing posts for static blogs as well as overall notetaking and to-do checklists. At first glance, it seems like a simple app that draws on GUI elements already present in many other GNOME apps, and it kind of is that. But in a way, that's what makes it so good. There are a lot of things that developers can pull from the GTK toolkit, and Iotas manages to make an app with a familiar look and feel that is just different enough to fill a critical gap in the overall GNOME ecosystem for a notetaking app.</p>
There are two "tiers" of official</em> GNOME apps: GNOME Core</a> for the really official</em> ones, and GNOME Circle</a> for those at the level below that. Iotas is a GNOME Circle app. There is no GNOME Core app for notetaking in case you were wondering. I was.</p>
Iotas is distributed as a Flatpak, which is how I install most things in Bluefin</a> (and Aeon</a> and Silverblue</a> before it). I couldn't find a traditional Fedora package, though there is a Debian package</a>. I just installed Iotas on my Debian 13 desktop, and even there I opted for the Flatpak because I want the latest version, which fixes the critical (to me) bug involving file exports.</p>
The notes in Iotas are stored in a SQLite database, not in plain text files like many other notetaking apps. This should theoretically make for a less cluttered setup since there won't be a large number files on your drive.</p>
However, if you want to move all of the notes to another app, or just to a folder on your system, you'll have to export them. More on that below. As I say above (and below), exporting</code> from a notes app is key to using it to write posts for my Zola</a> blog. The process is the same for a Hugo</a> blog — or any site that works with text files.</p>
And like almost all notetaking apps, Iotas automatically saves your work as you go. That's a feature I really like. I had no idea that notetaking apps pretty much all do this. Again, I'm in favor. You don't think you need</em> it, and it probably wouldn't work if you are relying on Git to provide version control for your site. I do not use version control for my sites, and it turns out that I find the auto-saving to be a very valuable feature.</p>
Iotas is a Markdown-friendly app. You can switch modes between writing mode and Markdown Render</strong>. Why not both at once? That's how Folio</a> does it. I'm generally OK with seeing the Markdown markup</em> code when I write and only seeing the rendered Markdown formatting when I want to. The way Iotas does Markdown Render mode looks great. But you can't do any editing there, the notable (and useful) exception being the ability to toggle checkboxes. More on that below</em>.</p>
I like Iotas' presentation and even the font. I would definitely use this font in another notetaking app.</p>
Iotas has a feature called focus mode</em>.  When turned on, it only highlights the sentence you're working on. I've used text editors that highlight the line you are working on, but I've never seen an app highlight only a single sentence. While I could see myself using this, it could be more distracting that not.</p>
The app is already pretty clean in terms of its UI. It's not at all crazy looking like some notetaking apps.</p>
When I first started using Iotas, it would crash when I tried to export a note. That was a bit of a deal-breaker. But since then, the export</code> bug has been fixed, but I still needed a little tweak to make it work.</p>
After I got the Flatpak update with the fix, I tried to export any of the available formats (PDF, ODT, HTML, MD), I got a message saying that the export failed, and there was an error opening my exported file.</p>
So what was going on? Iotas was trying to do the export to ~/.var/app/org.gnome.World.Iotas/data/iotas/exports</code>, and the exports</code> directory didn't exist in the Flatpak sandbox location on my system. I created the directory in Files/Nautilus, and the exports to it started working immediately.</p>
The Iotas Flatpak ships more locked down</em> than many other apps. Unless you allow it, the Iotas Flatpak won’t write to your home directory outside of its Flatpak sandbox. For my blog posting, I needed to export to the blog’s content directory. I used Flatseal to add permissions for my home directory, and then I could export to the folder containing the .md</code> files for my Zola blog</a>.</p>
In addition to exporting individual notes, you can select everything in Iotas and then batch-export all of the notes. I tested this, and it dropped a folder with all of my notes in the app's Flatpak sandbox (~/.var/app/org.gnome.World.Iotas/data/iotas/exports</code>). It took a tweak to get there (more info below), and I still couldn't get the batch export into any other folder, though it's easy enough to move the folder after the fact.</p>
Aside from writing blog posts, I’m looking for a notes app not just for general notes</em> but also for to-do lists</em>. And to that end, Iotas does checkbox lists very well. This example looks very nice in the app (trust me):</p>
How to evaluate a notetaking app</h2>


Does it support Markdown?</li>

Will it export a file?</li>

Can it do checkboxes?</li>

The checkboxes are actually checkable in rendering mode. I wish that QOwnNotes had this feature</li>
</ul>
It does it with the Markdown checkbox formatting: - [ ]</code> and crosses out the line when you "check" the box:  - [x]</code>, both in writing mode and Markdown Render mode.</p>
I'd almost just use this app for checkbox lists, even though not being able to edit in Markdown Render mode is not ideal.</p>
While I figured out exporting</code> from Iotas, there is no way to import</code> notes. That's not a feature I think I need, but it's nice to have</em>. There's also no way to link notes together like in other apps such as QOwnNotes</a> and Obsidian</a>. Again, is this a feature I personally need? I've used it but can get along without it.</p>
Another thing Iotas is missing is the ability to either copy a note or use a template to create a new one. I have generic TOML front matter for Zola that I need to use every time, and either making a template that includes it, or being able to easily copy a note that contains it would speed my workflow. As it is, to write a blog post, I first have to open the front-matter note, copy the contents and then start a new note with it pasted in. It's not arduous</em>, but also not as streamlined as it could be. I understand that the nature of these notetaking apps, which save your work automatically, make save</code> and save as</code> functionality a moot point. But still, I'd like to somehow integrate my boilerplate TOML into my workflow in a seamless way. QOwnNotes does it.</p>
Overall, I like the way Iotas works. I thought I wouldn't like an app that kept its notes in a database as opposed to flat files. But exporting works so well. The Markdown translates perfectly. You'd think that would be a given, but I've seen at least a couple of notetaking apps that can't manage to export without screwing it up. Iotas even makes setting the file name easy: It uses the note title and adds .md</code>. And since note titles are user-editable in Iotas, that works perfectly.</p>
I have another post on Iotas almost ready to go, and unless it repeats all of the information in this one, I'll be publishing it soon. So far, Iotas is my No. 1 notetaking app, and I'm not sure if something else can unseat it at this point, though QOwnNotes is close.</p>
Later:</strong> I'm still having some issues with formatting of the front matter  on blog posts created with Iotas. Or the problem could be that I'm also editing these notes/posts with Nextcloud Notes. I'm not sure yet.</p>
What could happen:</strong> I might end up using notetaking apps for lots of things that aren't</em> blog posting and just write posts BEFORE adding front matter. That might be the direction I take with this "project"</em>.</p>


Folio is a pretty basic notetaking app
2026-04-08T00:00:00+00:00
A lot of notetaking apps are pretty basic. They don't have extensive menus, and a lot of formatting options are in the toolbar.</p>
Folio</a> is</em> kind of basic, but it does two things that other basic notetaking apps don't do: Notes can have custom names and can be exported as Markdown files.</p>
The custom names are nice. But in Folio they aren't critical because you still have to type in a file name when exporting your .md</code> file. And if you do change a note name, there is a short yet annoying lag between the change and it appearing in the list of notes to the left.</p>
The ability to export a file is critical for my main use case, which is writing Markdown posts with TOML front matter for static site generators such as Zola and Hugo.</p>
Two of the things that pretty much all notetaking apps have in common are:</p>

The ability to work on multiple notes at the same time and easily switch between them</li>
Auto saving of notes</li>
</ul>
These two features are why I'm looking at notetaking apps as possible replacements for traditional text editors for the writing of blog posts. I want to streamline the writing process in terms of the computing mechanics</em>. Are notetaking apps actually helpful</em> in this task? I'm not sure yet.</p>
That slightly existential</em> question aside, Folio does these two core features as well as any app. But one thing Folio does better than most apps I've tried is the writing and display of Markdown. You could say that Folio is as much a Markdown editor as it is a notetaking app.</p>
Folio, which I installed as a Flatpak on my Bluefin Linux system, somehow became the system's default app for handling Markdown files. That's probably not an accident — or not much of one, anyway.</p>
Most of the basic Markdown formatting — headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, links and code blocks — can be accessed from the toolbar at the bottom of the app.</p>
For those who care about such things (including me), Folio is a native desktop app written in the Vala programming language</a>, which is a common (or at least encouraged) language that is object-oriented yet generages C code and uses the GObject type system. It is meant to be a close fit with the GNOME desktop environment.</p>
Recommended install methods for Folio are Flatpak</a>, Snap</a> and AppImage</a>. And it's a true open-source app under the GPL 3 license.</p>
One thing I like in a notetaking app, very much aside from how well it allows me to write blog posts, is the ability to add a checkbox function to to-do lists. This is my second requirement in a notes app, and I'm willing to use two apps, one for blogging and another for to-do lists.</p>
Folio doesn't do the checkboxes, even with the usual Markdown, which I believe is:</p>
- [ ]</code></p>
It renders Markdown so well that I'm surprised this isn't a feature. There's an issue for it in GitHub</a>, but it hasn't been added to the app.</p>
And one bug keeps coming up. When switching between notes, often one will display with only one line in it, even though it's longer. Continuing to toggle between the notes resolves the issue. It's a bit unsettling. I don't want to lose any work, though it hasn't come to that yet. I haven't quite figured out the pattern, which would help me avoid it.</p>
I'll have to check out the GitHub issues to see if anybody else has noticed.</p>
It could be https://github.com/toolstack/Folio/issues/300</a>, but it's more likely https://github.com/toolstack/Folio/issues/293</a>, and the project hasn't cut a release since before it was fixed.</p>
Why hasn't there been a release in almost a year? I don't know.</p>
Another thing:</strong> One way Folio doesn't do as good of a job as QOwnNotes at exporting Markdown files for blogging in my situation is that while QOwnNotes uses the note's name as the exported file's name, Folio leaves the file name blank, and you have to fill it in. It's quite an extra step</em>.</p>


How good is the Folio notetaking app?
2026-04-07T00:00:00+00:00
Folio</a> is all about Markdown files, yet it's a pretty simple notetaking app.</p>
Will it work for writing Zola and Hugo blog posts?</p>
You can name a file anything you want, and you choose an additional filename upon export to .md. (Don't give it an .md suffix, or you'll get .md.md</code>). I prefer the notetaking app to automatically assume that I want the note's name as the exported file's name while also allowing me to change it, but at least Folio remembers the file name I have chosen if I export the file multiple times, which I do with almost every post I write to either extend it or (much more often) fix errors.</p>
The Markdown rendering is nice. Not all notetaking apps that support Markdown can render it in the app, and render it well. I like a toggle between raw text and rendered Markdown, but it's not a must</em>.</p>
A couple of weird things in Folio that are not deal-breakers are that I can set an internal or external link, but I can't seem to click that link and be taken to its source. It should be something like shift-click</code>, but I can't figure out what works. And if you have a Markdown-coded word at the end of a sentence followed by a period, it's hard to then position your cursor after that period to do an edit. You have to go to the next line and backspace to the real end of the sentence.</p>
Also, I did have an issue where one of my notes kept slightly disappearing. It could have had something to do with two notes beginning with similar names (2026-0403). I renamed one 2026-0402, but this is an issue that I'll need to watch out for and also try to replicate.</p>
And just now my front-matter note seemed to be empty after I copy-pasted its contents into this note. I went to my text file in the GNOME Text Editor and copy-pasted it back into the note. Can I rely on Folio not to eat my notes</em>? I'm not sure just yet.</p>
Folio is very comfortable as a Markdown editor. You don't have to switch modes between Markdown source and rendered Markdown. The markup always renders, and if you want to see the source of an element, clicking on it will show the unrendered markup.</p>
For the purposes of getting my Zola front matter into new blog posts, I have that code in Folio as its own note. I wish there was a way to save as</em> or paste it as a macro. Folio is simple and has neither of those features. So I'll have to open that note and copy/paste its contents into a new one.</p>


More about QOwnNotes
2026-04-05T00:00:00+00:00
I'm not saying that QOwnNotes</a> is going to be my choice of notetaking apps both for regular notes and posts for my Zola blog, but it's definitely the front-runner.</p>
It's a true open-source app made in a real desktop framework, and so far it is working very well.</p>
Aside from Gnote and Sticky Notes, I had never used a notetaking app before, so the whole concept was new to me.</p>
To get a feel for QOwnNotes, start with the overview</a>.</p>


The Duplicate Note script in QOwnNotes copies Zola's TOML front matter into a new post
2026-04-04T00:00:00+00:00
I got a little deeper into QOwnNotes today. My goal was to script a way to easily start a new post with Zola front matter already in the note. For now I found an existing script in QOwnNotes called Duplicate Note.</p>
I created a note with the "raw" Zola post TOML front matter, and now I can select the note, right-click and duplicate it to begin the new post.</p>
I still have to name the note, though I don't have to type in a file name when exporting to the blog folder. And it's a time-saver because I don't have to leave QOwnNotes to find the front matter and copy/paste it into the new post.</p>
Go to Scripting -> Find scripts in script repository</code>, or click alt-shift-I</code> to get to the pre-made scripts and then search for Duplicate note</code>. Then select and install the script.</p>
There is documentation for making your own scripts</a>, and that's something I will leave for later. I think the move is adding a button or menu entry to automatically generate a "blank" note with all the TOML front matter in it. But for now, Duplicate note</code> should do the job.</p>


Solved: Why Zola wouldn't build my blog
2026-04-04T00:00:00+00:00
All of the new entries I made with notetaking apps were causing the Zola binary to stop with this error:</p>
$ ./zola build
</span>Building site...
</span>Checking all internal links with anchors.
</span>> Successfully checked 0 internal link(s) with anchors.
</span>-> Creating 26 pages (0 orphan) and 1 sections
</span>Error: Failed to build the site
</span>Error: Failed to render page '/var/home/steven/Sync/blogs/zola/passthejoe/content/blog/2024-10-16-free-hosted-blogging.md'
</span>Error: Reason: Failed to render 'page.html'
</span>Error: Reason: Function call 'get_taxonomy_term' failed
</span>Error: Reason: `get_taxonomy_term` received an unknown term: blogging
</span></code></pre>
Zola seems to think that one of my taxonomies</code> is blogging</em>. Except that blogging</em> is a category</em>, not a taxonomy on its own. And I have previous entries with blogging</em> as a category.</p>
I looked at the files generated by QOwnNotes and Folio, and the line endings looked fine: lf</em> all the way.</p>
The solution:</strong> It had nothing to do with the files created by the notetaking apps. or their line endings.</p>
I always forget about this: When picking taxonomies (in my case categories</code> and tags</code>), if a taxonomy is spelled with the same letters but different capitalization, the Zola binary will throw the error above.</p>
I had blogging</code> in one entry and Blogging</code> in another, notetaking apps</code> in one, Notetaking apps</code> in another.</p>
I don't know if this is considered a bug or a feature.</p>
But I now remember running into this in the past. So it's probably a good idea to be consistent with taxonomies. either all lower case, or upper case where appropriate. In any case, when the errors happen, it's easy enough to check your taxonomies on the live site and see what's baked into your system.</p>


Creating a Zola blog post in Joplin. It didn't go so well
2026-04-04T00:00:00+00:00
Can I create a blog post in Joplin</a> that easily</em> goes from the notetaking app to the directory where my Zola posts live?</p>
Many notetaking apps render Markdown, but not all can export an .md</code> file.</p>
Joplin can export an .md. First you need to specify a directory and set the note's name as the filename you want in Linux/Unix. And then it doesn't do well when I use brackets, which I need for Zola front matter as well as Markdown in the post.</p>
If I try to manually do a link like this</a>, it doesn't output right in the .md</code>. All of the[</code>and]</code> are preceded by an escape slash, as in \[</code> and \]</code>. Joplin does eventually render the manually typed Markdown correctly. It's not instant, but is fairly close.</p>
I thought there was a workaround. I clicked the Toggle Editors</code> button and was able to see the escapes and then tried to remove them. But soon enough, the brackets in my TOML front matter were escaped again. That's not going to work.</p>
Note:</strong> I fixed the escaped brackets and pulled some extra spaces out of the TOML front matter in the post, and it still wouldn't publish in Zola. I had to complete replace the front matter to get Zola to build the entry. So I'd say Joplin is a no</em> for Zola blog post writing.</p>
What I'm thinking:</strong> Maybe a notetaking app is a hammer and writing blog posts is not a nail</em>.</p>


Another Zola post created with the Folio notetaking app
2026-04-03T00:00:00+00:00
While trying to export this post, I had a bit of an issue with the note, but restarting Folio</a> brought it back. Losing notes or edits is always worrying, and until I know how it happened, and it doesn't repeat, I'll be wary of Folio.</p>
There's still some kind of bug happening. Could it be because both notes have names in Folio that begin with 2026-0403</code>?</p>


QOwnNotes has Vim mode
2026-04-03T00:00:00+00:00
There's a warning that says, some QOwnNotes shortcuts will not work</em>if you invoke Vim mode (Note -> Settings -> Editor -> Editor Options -> Enable Vim mode</code>).</p>
Still, Vim mode does work.</p>
The last app in which I used Vim mode (other than Vim) was the Kate text editor.</p>
Vim mode in QOwnNotes could be very helpful, though I'm not sure it's all that necessary</em> for my use of the app to write. I kind of wish it was a toggleable feature from the menu or toolbar and not something in the settings.</p>


Custom note names in QOwnNotes
2026-04-02T00:00:00+00:00
Since QOwnNotes</a> takes its note name from the first line of every post, and the first line of every Zola</a> blog post is +++</code> due to the TOML frontmatter</a>, I'm going to have to deal with this on the notetaking end of things.</p>
Naming the note by the Zola filename I want to use for the post would be the best outcome, and it turns out that is possible.</p>
When you try to rename a note, you get this dialog:</p>

If you want to rename your note you have to enable the option to allow the note filename to be different from the headline.</p>
</blockquote>
The dialog leads you right there, but you can get there any time in QOwnNotes under Note -> Settings -> Note Folders</code>. I only have one note folder at this point, and it's called default</code>, so right there I click the box next to Allow note file name to be different from headline</code>, and that lets me rename my notes. It's a nice feature that it's allowed by note folder (and that multiple note folders are possible).</p>
To veer off-topic only slightly, one of the things I like about QOwnNotes is that it is a native application coded in C++ with the QT toolkit</a>. It's not an Electron app yet is still available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.</p>
Another point in QOwnNotes' favor for the purpose of creating posts for static sites is that when exporting, the program remembers the directory and file name you last used, which saves considerably on clicking and typing. It makes the export a fairly seamless part of my blogging workflow.</p>


A Zola post created in the Folio notetaking app
2026-04-02T00:00:00+00:00
Can the Folio notetaking app</a> help me create blog posts for Zola?</p>
So far the files look clean. They exist as Unix files, with the default location being ~.var/app/com.toolstack.Folio/data</code> for the Folio Flatpak. And the working directory can be moved out of the Flatpak area and into other parts of the home directory, which is good because I don't always back up the Flatpak data under .var</code>. So far, so good.</p>
You can set a name for a note in Folio and when exporting to the file system. When exporting to your blog's /content</code> directory, don't add the .md</code>, or you'll get .md.md</code> in the exported file's name.</p>
Even though files seem to save themselves, there is a config setting to automatically save files every 30 seconds. I set that. One thing I don't want to do is have to remember to save a file.</p>


This is a Zola post that started in QOwnNotes
2026-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
Can I create a Zola blog post in a notetaking app and have it successfully move from the app to the live site?</p>
If you're seeing this, the answer is yes.</p>


Zola for Note Taking by Bhavani Shankar
2025-05-14T00:00:00+00:00
In his post, A simple setup for distraction free writing</a>, Bhavani Shankar goes over his workflow, which includes the Helix text editor (Vim-like but with more batteries included than Neovim) and Zola "for generating websites and taking notes."</p>
I keep trying the hot/new editors of the moment (or of the past 5 years ...), and I've been through Neovim, the GUI version Neovide and now Helix.</p>
Since I rely heavily on macros in my .vimrc</code>, and none of those macros work in the vimrc-like config for Neovim, and I couldn't find any documentation for Helix that mentions macros and how to do them.</p>
I'm guessing that the Neovim community is encouraging the configuration based on Lua rather than Vimscript, which is fine except that I don't know how to replicate my .vimrc</code> in either Neovim or Helix.</p>
If I want "distraction-free" writing, I can do that in Vim or the GNOME Text editor (which I'm using now).</p>
And of course I'm in favor of using Zola as a static-site generator, though Hugo would work just as well.</p>
One thing I did to make my publishing workflow more efficient is move a copy of my rsync deploy script into my main Zola directory. That way I can zola build</code> and then run the rsync script without having to change directories at all.</p>
As an aside, making simple scripts is the only way</em> to use rsync. And I almost always prefer rsync to using an FTP client. It's easier and faster.</p>
I could reduce the number of steps even further by writing a script that put the zola build</code> and rsync operations under a single command.</p>
passthejoe by Steven Rosenberg - notetaking

Using the Obsidian notetaking app to write posts for Zola

Is Standard Notes worth $90 to $120 a year?

Iotas and Nextcloud Notes sync

Why is it so hard (or impossible) to get a clean Markdown export out of Obsidian and Standard Notes?

QOwnNotes and Iotas sync with Nextcloud in two different ways

Iotas is a GNOME Circle notetaking app that is a pretty good fit for writing blog posts

How to evaluate a notetaking app</h2> Does it support Markdown?</li> Will it export a file?</li> Can it do checkboxes?</li>

Folio is a pretty basic notetaking app

How good is the Folio notetaking app?

More about QOwnNotes

The Duplicate Note script in QOwnNotes copies Zola's TOML front matter into a new post

Solved: Why Zola wouldn't build my blog

Creating a Zola blog post in Joplin. It didn't go so well

Another Zola post created with the Folio notetaking app

QOwnNotes has Vim mode

Custom note names in QOwnNotes

A Zola post created in the Folio notetaking app

This is a Zola post that started in QOwnNotes

Zola for Note Taking by Bhavani Shankar
