diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 269d2ab..9f6eed9 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 - Added RSS feed generation.
 - Added default post description to configuration.
 - Added time-of-day support to post `date` frontmatter parsing.
+- `zona init` now only writes `footer.md` to the templates directory.
 
 # 1.2.1
 
diff --git a/src/zona/layout.py b/src/zona/layout.py
index e912dd0..f4c7311 100644
--- a/src/zona/layout.py
+++ b/src/zona/layout.py
@@ -125,7 +125,8 @@ def initialize_site(root: Path | None = None):
     layout = Layout.from_input(root=root, validate=False)
     # load template resources
     logger.debug("Loading internal templates.")
-    templates = util.get_resources("templates")
+    # only write the footer
+    templates = [util.get_resource("templates/footer.md")]
     logger.debug("Loading internal static content.")
     static = util.get_resources("content")
     for dir, resources in [