Steps to Resolve Zola Environment Variable Configuration Failure
When encountering environment variable configuration issues when deploying Zola locally, the following scenario can be troubleshooted:
- Check the file creation location: Ensure that the .env.local file is created in the root directory of the project (at the same level as package.json), Windows systems need to turn off the 'Hide known file extensions' option to prevent the generation of .txt files
- Authentication key format: The API key needs to be strictly
KEY=valueWrite in a format that avoids extra spaces or special characters, such asOPENAI_API_KEY=sk-xxxxxx - Restart the development server: After modifying the environment variables, you need to re-execute the
npm run devput into effect - Using the Validation Tool: This can be done by adding the
console.log(process.env)Output checks that the variables are loaded correctly
If it still doesn't work, try 1) writing the variables directly to next.config.js, 2) manually loading them using the dotenv package, and 3) checking if the firewall is blocking the reading of .env files.
This answer comes from the articleZola: Open Source AI Chat Web App with Document Upload and Multi-Model SupportThe






























