What IS Eleventy
Short introduction to Eleventy
Eleventy (11ty) was created to be a JavaScript alternative to Jekyll. It’s zero-config by default but has flexible configuration options. Eleventy works with your project’s existing directory structure.
Unlike other JavaScript web frameworks like Gatsby or NuxtJS, 11ty doesn’t come bundled with a front-end library. 11ty is more like a traditional SSG (such as Hugo or Jekyll) where it takes a series of templates, markdown files, and data and renders HTML files to serve.
Eleventy (11ty) - official website
Eleventy uses independent template engines. We don’t want to hold your content hostage. If you decide to use something else later, having your content decoupled in this way will make migration easier. Eleventy works with multiple template languages. You can pick one or use them all together in a single project: html, Markdown, Liquid, Mustache.
Reasons to use 11ty
Eleventy is a static site generator created for three main reasons (according to the creator, Zach Leaterman).
Flexibility
Eleventy allows you to mix and match templating engines to allow easy migration of existing content. Your content templates can use a different templating engine than your layout files!
Previous SSG's are tied to a single template language, as a rule. Jekyll uses Liquid, Hugo uses Go Templates and Gatsby is React entirely. Eleventy innovates and empower the developer to use his preferred language from a long list:
HTML
Markdown
Liquid (used by Jekyll)
Nunjucks
Handlebars
Mustache
EJS
Haml
Pug
Directory structure flexibility
Eleventy wants to work with your project’s existing directory structure. Is not mandatory to save your content files in a _posts directory or a source folder (unless you really want to). You tell Eleventy where your files are and we’ll work with you. This is pretty nice!
All you need to do is to execute eleventy and all files from the current directory are translated to _site folder. This can be customized with ease using --input and --output arguments.
Eleventy is Javascript
JavaScript gives you access to npm, a massive ecosystem with many modules and libraries built by open-source enthusiasts. While Eleventy uses JavaScript in node.js to transform templates into content, importantly (by default) it does not recommend nor force your HTML to include any Eleventy-specific client-side JavaScript.
Install Eleventy
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