Note
While this starter is MIT licensed, please feel free to license your website differently. The only situation where I'd ask you preserve the MIT license is if you want to create a variation/spinoff of the starter itself.
This is an opinionated starter for 11ty that includes:
- Pre-configured 11ty directories (input, output, data, includes, layouts) and custom filters.
- A separate directory for 11ty-specific configs: filters, shortcodes, etc.
- Basic image optimization using the official
@11ty/eleventy-img
transform plugin. - Sass compilation, including partials for breakpoints, mixins, functions, and CSS resets.
- Basic SEO enhancements: essential meta tags and a programmatically generated
sitemap.xml
androbots.txt
. - Auto-generated favicon link tags from a single source image.
- Convenient
package.json
scripts for develop, production, and linting. - Global configuration files (pre-commit/checkout hooks, line ending normalization, linters, VS Code settings).
This starter template does not:
- Generate any output CSS. It only sets up basic Sass boilerplate for you to customize.
- Make any assumptions about your build pipeline or tooling (e.g., gulp).
- Make any assumptions about your client-side JavaScript bundler or pipeline.
- Configure a Markdown processor (you can install
markdown-it
if you need it). - Get in your way.
Most of this template serves as the foundation for my personal website.
- Installation
- Checklist
- Project Structure
- Image Optimization
package.json
Scripts- Custom Front Matter
- CSS (Sass)
- Editor Settings
- Linting
- Click the
Use this template
button.
-
Install dependencies using your package manager of choice.
-
Follow the checklist.
The following tasks are required:
- Fill out
src/_data/site.js
with your site's metadata and production URL. - Update
package.json
with your site's info (seeTODO:
s). - Replace the favicon in
src/assets/images/favicon
with your site's favicon.
Optionally, you may also want to customize:
- The 11ty directory config.
- The template format and engine in
.eleventy.js
. - The image transform options.
- Any ESLint, Prettier, or Stylelint linter rules.
- Any filters, like the custom slugify function.
- Your project's style tokens, such as media query breakpoints.
- The browserslist config in
package.json
, for client-side bundlers.
11ty input directory containing all of the site's files, templates, assets, etc.
_data
: global site data._includes
: partials/includes._layouts
: site layouts. A default layout already exists._pages
: site pages. Each page uses the default layout.assets
: images, fonts, CSS, etc.robots.liquid
: writes arobots.txt
to your site.sitemap.liquid
: creates a basic sitemap for your site.
Eleventy-specific configurations for filters, collections, general utilities, etc. Import these into your .eleventy.js
to configure Eleventy. You are encouraged to write tests for any core utilities (e.g., filters).
This starter includes basic image optimization using the official @11ty/eleventy-img
plugin, specifically the image transform plugin. This automatically optimizes and reformats images on any HTML page, including HTML generated from Markdown content. This means that you can do this in your blog posts:
![alt text](./path/to/local/image.jpeg)
And Eleventy will replace the image with an optimized one in production.
As an optimization for local development, Eleventy will only optimize images as they are requested by your browser.
Note
You will likely need to change the default image widths and formats used by this plugin to match your needs. See .eleventy.js
.
clean
: purges the build output directory.debug:html
: starts 11ty in debug mode.serve
: serves the site's HTML and CSS in development mode.build
: builds the site's HTML and CSS for production.lint
: runs all linters to detect and fix any issues.
Out of the box, this starter will recognize the following custom front matter variables if they are defined:
Key | Type | Description | Default |
---|---|---|---|
title |
string |
Page-specific title. Used by meta title and social previews. | site.title |
description |
string |
Page-specific description. Used for meta description and social previews. | site.description |
keywords |
string[] |
Array of page-specific keywords. Used for meta keywords. | site.keywords |
stylesheets |
string[] |
Array of href s to stylesheets needed by the current page. Must be root-relative paths to the final output files (e.g., /assets/styles/** —see example in default.html ). If these files are not part of your Sass build pipeline, you are responsible for passthrough-copying them. |
['/assets/styles/main.css'] |
scripts |
string[] |
Array of module script src es to load. Must be root-relative paths to the final output files (e.g., /assets/scripts/** ). You will need to output these yourself, either with passthrough copy or a bundler (esbuild, webpack, etc.). Note that module scripts are deferred by default and are safe to locate in the <head> . |
[] |
preloads |
{ as: string; type: string; href: string; crossorigin?: boolean }[] |
Preload optimizations for the current page. | [] |
openGraph.image |
string |
Path to a social preview image for the current page. If specified, the image will be used for the og:image and twitter:image meta tags. |
|
openGraph.type |
string |
The type of web page. For articles, consider using "article" . |
"website" |
openGraph.title |
string |
An optional override for the OpenGraph preview title. | Page title |
openGraph.description |
string |
An optional override for the OpenGraph preview description. | Page description |
openGraph.twitter.card |
"summary"|"summary_large_image" |
The type of Twitter card to use. | "summary" |
excludeFromSitemap |
boolean |
If true , excludes the current page from the sitemap. See sitemap.liquid . |
|
noindex |
boolean |
If true , adds a hint to the <head> to discourage search engine crawling for the page. Consider using this for tag pages and other auto-generated pages that have lots of duplicate content or content that you do not want to have indexed. |
This starter uses Sass (SCSS) to process CSS. It is preconfigured to listen for changes to Sass partials and recompile them into a main stylesheet that is then included in the default layout.
By default, this project contains partials for:
- Tokens
- Mixins
- Functions
You are free to add or delete any partials you need.
See the .vscode
directory for configurations related to Visual Studio Code:
settings.json
: workspace settings.extensions.json
: recommended workspace extensions.
Feel free to delete this folder if you do not use VS Code.
This template supports linting out of the box for JavaScript and Sass to enable you to quickly build your site without worrying about syntax issues and formatting. It uses the following linters:
- ESLint (
.eslintrc.json
) and Prettier (.prettierrc
) - Stylelint (
.stylelintrc.json
)
Relevant NPM packages:
eslint
prettier
eslint-config-prettier
eslint-plugin-prettier
stylelint
stylelint-scss
husky
lint-staged
See .vscode/settings.json
for the auto-formatting rules (if you use VS Code).