eleventy-base-blog v8

A starter repository showing how to build a blog with the Eleventy site generator (using the v2.0 beta release).

Features

• Using Eleventy v2.0 with zero-JavaScript output.
• Content is entirely pre-rendered (this is a static site).
• Four-hundos Lighthouse score out of the box!
• Easily deploy to various hosting providers.
• Live reload provided by Eleventy Dev Server.
• Content-driven hierarchical navigation
• Image optimization (including modern formats AVIF and WebP) via the {% image %} shortcode (images can be co-located with posts) (with zero-JavaScript output).
  • Prefers <img> if possible (single image format) but switches automatically to <picture> for multiple image formats.
  • Automated <picture> syntax markup with srcset and optional sizes
  • Includes width/height attributes to avoid content layout shift.
  • Includes loading="lazy" for native lazy loading without JavaScript.
  • Includes decoding="async"
• Built-in syntax highlighter (with zero-JavaScript output).
• Draft posts: use draft: true to mark a blog post as a draft. Drafts are only included during --serve/--watch and are excluded from full builds.
• Automated next/previous links on blog posts.
• Easily deploy to a subfolder without changing any content
• Easily configure templates via the Eleventy Data Cascade
• Output URLs are independent of content’s location on the file system.
• Generated:
  1. feeds for Atom and JSON
  2. sitemap.xml
  3. Tag pages (demo)
  4. Content not found (404) page

Demos

• Netlify
• GitHub Pages
• Remix on Glitch

Deploy this to your own site

Deploy this Eleventy site in just a few clicks on these services:

• Get your own Eleventy web site on Netlify
• If you run Eleventy locally you can drag your _site folder to drop.netlify.com to upload it!
• Get your own Eleventy web site on Vercel
• Read more about Deploying an Eleventy project to the web.

Getting Started

1. Clone this Repository

git clone https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog.git my-blog-name

2. Navigate to the directory

cd my-blog-name

Specifically have a look at eleventy.config.js to see if you want to configure any Eleventy options differently.

3. Install dependencies

npm install

4. Edit _data/metadata.json

5. Run Eleventy

Generate a production-ready build:

npx @11ty/eleventy

Or build and host locally on a local development server:

npx @11ty/eleventy --serve

Or in debug mode to see all the internals:

# Mac OS/Linux/etc
DEBUG=Eleventy* npx @11ty/eleventy

# Windows
set DEBUG=Eleventy* & npx @11ty/eleventy

# Windows (Powershell in VS Code)
$env:DEBUG="Eleventy*"; npx @11ty/eleventy

Implementation Notes

• content/about/index.md is an example of a content page.
• content/blog/ has the blog posts but really they can live in any directory. They need only the post tag to be included in the blog posts collection.
• Use the eleventyNavigation key (via the Eleventy Navigation plugin) in your front matter to add a template to the top level site navigation. This is in use on content/index.njk and content/about/index.md.
• Content can be in any template format (blog posts needn’t exclusively be markdown, for example). Configure your project’s supported templates in eleventy.config.js -> templateFormats.
• The public folder in your input directory will be copied to the output folder (via addPassthroughCopy in the eleventy.config.js file). This means ./public/css/* will live at ./_site/css/* after your build completes.
• The blog post feed template is in feed/feed.njk. This feed also uses the global data file at _data/metadata.json.
• This project uses three layouts:
  • _includes/layouts/base.njk: the top level HTML structure
  • _includes/layouts/home.njk: the home page template (wrapped into base.njk)
  • _includes/layouts/post.njk: the blog post template (wrapped into base.njk)
• _includes/postslist.njk is a Nunjucks include and is a reusable component used to display a list of all the posts. index.njk has an example of how to use it.