Beginning Eleventy
A Practical Introduction to the Eleventy Static Site Generator
This Apress imprint is published by the registered company APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
This is dedicated to my family, with thanks for their love and support while writing this book.
Beginning Eleventy is for people who want to learn how to quickly create websites that are efficient and fast using the upcoming Eleventy framework and associated tools.
This project-oriented book simplifies the setting up of an Eleventy site as a starting point before beginning to explore the benefits of using Eleventy in today’s environment and developing it into an offer that we can customize according to your needs. It will equip you with a starting toolset that you can use to create future projects, incorporate into your existing workflow, and that will allow you to take your websites to the next level.
Throughout this book, I’ll take you on a journey through constructing the front-end UI for our example site. We will touch on subjects such as adding data sources, creating templates, transforming content, and more – showing you how easy it is to develop simple websites that we can augment later quickly. With the minimum of fuss and plenty of practical exercises, we’ll focus on topics such as managing data and state, styling, creating components, and more – right through to producing the final result viewable from any browser!
Eleventy uses nothing more than standard JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, three of the most powerful tools available for developers: you can enhance, extend, and configure your site as requirements dictate. With Svelte, the art of possible is only limited by the extent of your imagination and the power of JavaScript, HTML, and Node.js.
Beginning Eleventy gets you quickly acquainted with creating and manipulating websites using tools familiar to all developers. It’s perfect for website developers who are already familiar with JavaScript and are keen to learn how to leverage the Eleventy framework. You may also be a developer for whom time is of the essence and simplicity is key; you need to produce efficient and properly optimized content in modern browsers using tools already in your possession.
Writing a book can be a long but rewarding process; it is not possible to complete it without the help of other people. I would like to offer a huge vote of thanks to my editors – in particular, Jessica Vakili, Silembarasan Panneerselvam, and James Robinson-Prior; my thanks also to Tanner Dolby as my technical reviewer, James Markham for his help during the process, and others at Apress for getting this book into print. All have made writing this book a painless and enjoyable process, even with the edits!
My thanks also to my family for being understanding and supporting me while writing. I frequently spend a lot of late nights writing alone, or pass up times when I should be with them, so their words of encouragement and support have been a real help in getting past those bumps in the road and producing the finished book that you now hold in your hands.
Lastly, it is particularly poignant that the book was written at a time when the world has faced global events of an unprecedented nature; it was too easy to think about those who lost the greatest thing we as humans could ever have. Having a project to work on – no matter how simple or complex it might be – helped me get through those tough times and with the hope that we face a new, improved, and hopefully better future.
is a front-end engineer and seasoned computer book author who hails from England. His passion for all things open source dates back to the days of his degree studies, where he first came across web development and has been hooked ever since. His daily work involves extensive use of React, NodeJS, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Alex enjoys tinkering with different open source libraries to see how they work. He has spent a stint maintaining the jQuery Tools library and enjoys writing about open source technologies, principally for front-end UI development.
is an applied mathematician and software engineer with two years of experience working alongside the development team of a large consulting company. Having received his Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from Arizona State University in 2020, Tanner specializes in back-end development and spends time working at all levels of the tech stack. He is an Eleventy contributor and has been working with Eleventy sites for 1.5 years. In his free time, Tanner likes to enjoy the outdoors, read a good book, and work on open source projects.