An11ty: An Eleventy Site

Easiest way to start using an 11ty site.

An11ty is an opinionated merge tool, which merges one or more 11ty structured template folders together, with an 11ty structured site, and then builds the site using the 11ty CLI tooling.

How to Use

The fastest way to get started is probably to use degit to fetch an11ty/starter, which is a simple starter website, using a single template:

npx degit an11ty/starter my-site
cd my-site
npm install

You'll notice that this starter project only has a very few files in it:

.gitignore
package.json
README.md
site
  |- index.md
  |- _data
      |- metadata.js

Your site content (and any template/setting overrides) live inside the site folder.

Like a normal 11ty site, the metadata about the site (such as title and author name) live inside the site/_data/metadata.js file.

To start development, simply run:

npm run dev

This will merge the template (from the node_modules folder) and the site into _merge, and then build the site into _site and launch a local server to view your new site!

(It will also watch the site folder and all template folders for any changes, and then re-merge and re-build.)

Commands

Because an11ty is meant to be a little more opinionated, it only supportes a limited set of 11ty commands:

• an11ty build - Build the whole site into the output folder.
• an11ty dev - Build the whole site into the output folder, watch for changes (rebuild on change), and launch an HTTP server.

Flags available for all commands:

• --help - Get help on any of the commands.
• --input, -i - The input folder, this would be your site content. (Default: site)
• --template, -t - (Required) The path to your installed template. You can specify multiple of these, and they will be merged one on top of the other, first to last.
• --merged, -m - The folder where the merged content goes. (Default: _merged)
• --output, -o - The folder where the built 11ty conten goes. (Default: _site)

Flags available for dev command:

• --port - The port to run the HTTP server. (Default: the 11ty default, 8080)

Templates

Check out an11ty-template for a great example template specially made for an11ty.

The an11ty command does a blind merge, copying the template folders into a temporary folder and then copying anything in your site on top of it, overwriting anything named the same.

Making an extensible template requires careful strategy, but you will likely find that other existing templates will work with little extra effort.

For more notes on building a good template, have a look at an11ty-template.

License

This software is published and released under the Very Open License.