Eleventy Excellent 2.0
I changed so much, that documenting everything will be hard. I will try and name the most important changes in the next few weeks.
Maybe a quick “why” first
I created this starter after I saw Andy’s talk and studied the source code for buildexcellentwebsit.es.
I quickly came to the conclusion that this is the way I want to build all my websites from now on! It’s so great. I know many of you feel the same way.
I had already accumulated a lot of opinions, files and basic settings from my previous Eleventy projects, and to make it easier for me to start a new project in the future, I combined everything in this starter. The name is a tribute to its origin:
“Go Forth And Build Excellent Websites”!
When that was finished, I thought it was only fair to make it easily accessible to others, and at the end of 2022 I registered the starter with the official stater projects.
What I didn’t count on, was how many people would actually go and use the starter.
So many of you have also contacted me or contributed something.
I wanted to make the starter better
I have since made sure that everything stays fairly updated, fixed a few bugs and added a few features – but I haven’t quite dared to change the base too much, now that so many others were involved.
The thing is, I have learned lots of new things and changed my mind about other stuff like naming or organization in the last year and a half. Whenever I begin a project now, I still turn to this starter – but I modify a lot before I get started. This goes above all for the organization and naming of files and folders, modern CSS, and better accessibility.
You will see that many things are new and different, but better! And that the basic character is still the same.
I will try and take some time to document important changes so you can upgrade more easily.
I have kept v1 in a separate branch.
Plans for the future
- I will change everything to ES modules as soon as Eleventy v3 with ESM support is stable.
- I might bring back the drawer menu as something to opt in (Update: I did this already, see “Get started”).
- Lots of small fixes, no doubt.
Thank you and let’s build more excellent websites!
