Opiniated but easy to use Eleventy starter, based on the workflow suggested by Andy Bell's buildexcellentwebsit.es.
If you end up using this starter, feel free to send me a link, I'd love to see it! Also let me know if you miss any features. Currently in planning: dark mode, inlining CSS and JS.
- Eleventy Excellent
https://eleventy-excellent.netlify.app/
This starter includes:
- The whole CSS workflow as suggested by buildexcellentwebsit.es
- Accessible site navigation, editable in
src/_data/navigation.js - Image optimization with Eleventy-img (see blog post)
- Youtube embed with lite-youtube (see blog post)
- Easy resource fetching with eleventy-fetch (see blog post)
- Syntax highlighting via eleventy-plugin-syntaxhighlight (see blog post)
- Advanced markdown handling (see blog post)
- 301 redirects for Netlify (see blog post)
- Automatically generated Open Graph images for blog posts (see blog post)
- SEO basics (XML-sitemap, metadata)
- dayjs handling dates & times
- Bundling via esbuild
- RSS feed
- Links to social networks in footer
- Mastodon domain verification snippet
- Important: edit meta data in
src/_data/meta.js, it's being used all over the template. - Search for 'eleventy-excellent.netlify.app'. You'll find an entry in
src/assets/css/global/global-styles.css. Replace with your own domain. - Edit your social media in
src/_data/social.jsandsrc/_includes/icons. If you add new icons they must be prefixed with "social-". By default you have rss, mastodon, twitter, ko-fi, linkedin and github. Great resource: https://lucide.dev/ - Not required, but recommended: Delete
github.jsinsrc/_data/github.jsand the blog posts, as these serve only as an example. - Edit your preferences (colors, fluid text sizes etc.) in
src/assets/css/design-tokens. - Optional: set your (favicon) icons in
src/assets/images/favicon. - Optional: rename
.env-sampleto.envadn set custom URL for local development
npm install
Starts watch tasks to compile when changes detected
npm start
Minify JS, CSS and HTML.
npm run build
- andystitt.com (slightly customized)
- figcat.com (heavily customized)
- stephenanfield.com (slightly customized)
- krgr.dev (slightly customized)
- lenesaile.com (heavily customized)
-
Replaced Heydon's redundant click event for cards with his pseudo-content trick solution so we don't lose the context menu.
- https://inclusive-components.design/cards/#theredundantclickevent
+ https://inclusive-components.design/cards/#thepseudocontenttrick
- updated Elevebty
- minor: added automatically generated open graph images for blog posts
- updated Eleventy
- added package version number in footer
- updated Eleventy
- minor: changed CSS for header, not using the sidebar solution anymore. sidebar.css thus deleted. Now the focus for the logo section doesn't expand all the way to the menu anymore.
- Updated and added some
relvalues after reading Alvaro Montoro's excellent article A Theory of Web Relativity. - stripped "noreferrer" from external links in markdown (editable in
config/plugins/markdown.js), because I don't mind the target page of carefully placed links to identify the source of the reference. - added two more pages to the 'built with' section, yay!
- Thought: Now that actually some websites in production are based on this starter, should I create formal release notes?
- Andy now links to his mastodon profile
- Linked blog posts in readme
- added JS and CSS as as first-class citizens in Eleventy, out of the npm scripts.
- imported htmlmin transform, css and js processing with
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(require("other-config-file.js")), see https://front-end.social/@eleventy@fosstodon.org/109501433721579265
- updated head structure for better performance
- added "built with this" section in readme
- added note for internal links in markdown blog post
- adding page based preload option, making preload of monospaced font in posts default to avoid CLS
- updated required node version in package.json
- meta.js now controls most of the templates defaults
- added RSS feed, because of course!!
- made twitter and other meta data OPTIONAL
- added Mastodon verification and more social icon defaults
- focus-within for the cards
- added blog posts for feature explanation
- WebC in own branch
- simplify main branch
- all markdown syntax set
- first commit. Updated
Andy Bell
His CSS methodology "CUBE" makes sense to me. It goes hand in hand with Every Layout (which he co-authors). He has recently published an approach that incorporates Tailwind CSS into his methodology. Also, I learned how to use Eleventy in 2020 with his (now free) course.
Heydon Pickering
I strongly orientate myself on Heydon's approaches and really love his books.
Zach Leatherman
He is developing Eleventy and is constantly making it even better!
Stephanie Eckles
Stephanie provides a lot of resources for Eleventy and modern CSS.
Aleksandr Hovhannisyan
I love order and structure. Aleksandr does this in an exemplary way, which is why I based the structure of eleventy.js on his personal site. The 301 redirect solution I'm using is from his blog.
- https://github.com/AleksandrHovhannisyan
- https://www.aleksandrhovhannisyan.com/blog/eleventy-netlify-redirects/
Manuel Matuzović
Manuel is an accessibility expert. The menu I'm using is from one of his articles on web.dev.
Bernard Nijenhuis
Bernard wrote the article on which the Open Graph Images implementation is based.