Frequently Asked Questions

Installation

How do I install a quarto?: Don't. Download the stock quarto or use it as a template.
How do I upgrade a quarto?: Copy the quarto folder from another quarto project.
Why is requirements.txt blank?: There are no requirements. There are only extras.
What are the Dockerfile and kitchen files?: These files build and run containers for testing. Delete them if you want to.
Can I have multiple quartos on one machine?: Yes. They will not interfere with each other unless you insist.

How do I publish a website?: Upload your proof folder to a web host. Don't upload anything private!
Who is the host for this site?: Neocities is a nonprofit which offers free and low-cost hosting.
What address do people use to find my site?: Hosts usually assign a default address like quarto.neocities.org. You can change it if you have a registered domain name. Many hosts will do this for a small annual fee.
What do I do if someone else has the domain I want?: If the registrants are squatting, then you can sue them. If the domain is used in good faith, then you can try to buy it. Otherwise, you must use another domain.
My host is telling me to buy a bunch of stuff. Do I need it?: Do what you want, but you don't need frameworks, plugins, databases, server-side scripts, nor template languages to publish a website. All you need is HTML.

How do I edit page options?: See the page options docs for details.
Where are the site options?: Quartos have no site options. Home options in index.json are applied to all pages unless they are overruled by page options files.
Can I add more meta tags?: Yes. Add them to the "meta" field in page options. There is some debate about which tags are useful metadata and which are metacrap.
Can I build a site without icons, an email, a license, ...?: Yes. Leave those options blank. See page options for details.

How do I change backgrounds, colors, fonts, ... ?: Edit the CSS files in the style folder.
Can I add custom stylesheets?: Yes. Add any CSS files you want to the style folder.
Can I use external stylesheets?: Yes. Add absolute URLs to the list of styles in your page options.
Where are the background images?: All media files are in the proof/media folder. Delete anything you don't want. We have many backup copies of bitmap galaxies and vectorized tiger stripes.

Shall I compare thee to a static website generator?: Quartos are more lazy and more transparent.
What are some other static website generators?: Go: Hugo; JavaScript: Eleventy, Hexo, Metalsmith, VuePress; Python: Hyde, Lektor, MkDocs, Nikola, Pelican; Ruby: Jekyll, Middleman, Nanoc, Webgen
Do quartos build dynamic websites?: The stock quarto does not, but you could use the Quire class as a server-side page generator for something like bottle or flask or tornado.
Why doesn't Quarto have {x}?: Quartos favor speed, simplicity, and independence over completeness.
How do I request a feature?: DIY. We'll consider adding it to the stock quarto if your license allows it.

Where are all the modal windows?: I click to bury pop-ups, not engage them.
Is Quarto a web application framework?: No. Quartos avoid control inversion, middleware layers, and abstraction.
Why does the logo have cat ears?: Quartos are meant to be small, clean, lazy, independent string concatenators.
Wherefore art thou Quarto?: The more complex your systems become, the more you need a human to look at the bigger picture and make decisions. Alice Goldfuss; There will come a point where the accumulated complexity of our existing systems is greater than the complexity of creating a new one. Ryan Dahl; It is time to unmask the computing community as a Secret Society for the Creation and Preservation of Artificial Complexity. Edsger W. Dijkstra; Give the game away. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt