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A starter repository for a blog web site using the Eleventy static site generator.

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11ty/eleventy-base-blog

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eleventy-base-blog v9

A starter repository showing how to build a blog with the Eleventy site generator (using the v3.0 release).

Getting Started

  1. Make a directory and navigate to it:
mkdir my-blog-name
cd my-blog-name
  1. Clone this Repository
git clone https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog.git .

Optional: Review eleventy.config.js and _data/metadata.js to configure the site’s options and data.

  1. Install dependencies
npm install
  1. Run Eleventy

Generate a production-ready build to the _site folder:

npx @11ty/eleventy

Or build and host on a local development server:

npx @11ty/eleventy --serve

Or you can run debug mode to see all the internals.

Features

  • Using Eleventy v3 with zero-JavaScript output.
  • Performance focused: four-hundos Lighthouse score out of the box!
    • 0 Cumulative Layout Shift
    • 0ms Total Blocking Time
  • Local development live reload provided by Eleventy Dev Server.
  • Content-driven navigation menu
  • Fully automated Image optimization
    • Zero-JavaScript output.
    • Support for modern image formats automatically (e.g. AVIF and WebP)
    • Processes images on-request during --serve for speedy local builds.
    • Prefers <img> markup 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"
    • Images can be co-located with blog post files.
  • Per page CSS bundles via eleventy-plugin-bundle.
  • Built-in syntax highlighter (zero-JavaScript output).
  • Draft content: use draft: true to mark any template as a draft. Drafts are only included during --serve/--watch and are excluded from full builds. This is driven by the addPreprocessor configuration API in eleventy.config.js. Schema validator will show an error if non-boolean value is set in data cascade.
  • Blog Posts
    • Automated next/previous links
    • Accessible deep links to headings
  • Generated Pages

Demos

Deploy this to your own site

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

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 posts 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.
  • This project uses three Eleventy 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. content/index.njk has an example of how to use it.

Content Security Policy

If your site enforces a Content Security Policy (as public-facing sites should), you have a few choices (pick one):

  1. In base.njk, remove <style>{% getBundle "css" %}</style> and uncomment <link rel="stylesheet" href="{% getBundleFileUrl "css" %}">
  2. Configure the server with the CSP directive style-src: 'unsafe-inline' (less secure).