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eleventy 🕚 v0.3.3

A simpler static site generator. An alternative to Jekyll. Written in JavaScript. Transforms a directory of templates (of varying types) into HTML.

Works with:

Table of Contents

Read More at:

Getting Started

Requires version 8 of Node.js or higher.

npm install -g @11ty/eleventy

Available on npm. Previously known as eleventy-cli. Read more about local installation.

Run Eleventy

Make a directory with your project in it. Don’t include ~ $ when you run these commands.

~ $ mkdir eleventy-sample
~ $ cd eleventy-sample

Run eleventy:

~/eleventy-sample $ eleventy
Wrote 0 files in 0.02 seconds

Makes sense—this is an empty folder with no templates inside. So, let’s make a few templates.

~/eleventy-sample $ echo '<!doctype html><title>Page title</title>' > index.html
~/eleventy-sample $ echo '# Page header' > README.md

We’ve now created an HTML template and a markdown template. Now run eleventy again:

~/eleventy-sample $ eleventy
Writing _site/README/index.html from ./README.md
Writing _site/index.html from ./index.html
Wrote 2 files in 0.10 seconds

This will compile any content templates in the current directory or subdirectories into the output folder (defaults to _site). Congratulations—you made something with eleventy! Now put it to work with templating syntax, front matter, and data files (read on below).

See more sample projects

  1. eleventy-base-blog: How to build a blog web site with Eleventy.
  2. @Heydon’s lovely Inclusive Web Design Checklist, converted to use eleventy. The original project took a JSON file and converted it HTML with some one-off JavaScript. This uses eleventy to transform the data using a nunjucks template, resulting in a cleaner, templated setup.
  3. 11ty-logo generates a template with eleventy that has hundreds of different font combinations in an attempt to pick a logo.
  4. Have a suggestion? File an issue!

Command line usage

# Searches the current directory, outputs to ./_site
eleventy

# Equivalent to
eleventy --input=. --output=_site

# Automatically run when input template files change.
eleventy --watch

# Override the default eleventy project config filename (.eleventy.js)
eleventy --config=myeleventyconfig.js

# Use only a subset of template types
eleventy --formats=md,html,ejs

# Find out the most up-to-date list of commands (there are more)
eleventy --help

Debugging

Having trouble? Want to see what Eleventy is doing behind the scenes? Use DEBUG mode. We’re taking advantage of the excellent debug package for this. Enable with the DEBUG env variable, either specific to eleventy (DEBUG=Eleventy*) or globally (DEBUG=*):

DEBUG=Eleventy* eleventy

It’s different if you’re on Windows.

This will tell you exactly what directories Eleventy is using for data, includes, input, and output. It’ll tell you what search globs it uses to find your templates and what templates it finds. If you’re having trouble, enable this.

(New in Eleventy v0.3.0) Works great with --dryrun if you want to run Eleventy but not actually write any files.

Read more at the debug package documentation.

Example: Default options

eleventy --input=. --output=_site

A template.md in the current directory will be rendered to _site/template/index.html. Read more at Permalinks

Example: Same Input and Output

Yes, you can use the same input and output directories, like so:

# Parse and write Markdown to HTML, respecting directory structure.
eleventy --input=. --output=. --formats=md

⚠️ Careful with --formats=html here! If you run eleventy more than once, it’ll try to process the output files too. Read more at Common Pitfalls.

Using Data (optional)

Front Matter on any Template

You may use front matter on any template file to add local data. Front matter looks like this:

---
title: My page title
---
<!doctype html>
<html>
<title>{{ title }}</title>
…

This allows you to assign data values right in the template itself. There are special keys in front matter that are used for special things in Eleventy, like permalink, pagination, layout, tags, and date. Read more about special keys in front matter data.

Data Files

Optionally add data files to add global static data available to all templates. Uses the dir.data configuration option. Read more about Using Data.

Special Variables

Note that {{ title }} above outputs the title data value (this can come from front matter or an external data file). Eleventy also exposes a few other variables to your templates:

  • pkg: The local project’s package.json values.
  • pagination: (When enabled in front matter) Read more about Pagination.
  • collections: Lists of all of your content, grouped by tags. Read more about Collections
  • page: Has information about the current page. Currently holds: { url: "/current/page/url.html", date: [JS Date Object for current page] }. Useful for finding the current page in a collection. Read more about Collections (look at Example: Navigation Links with an active class added for on the current page).

Configuration (optional)

Add an .eleventy.js file to root directory of your project to override these configuration options with your own preferences. Example:

module.exports = {
  dir: {
    input: "views"
  }
};
Configuration Option Key Default Option Valid Options Command Line Override Description
dir.input . Any valid directory. --input Controls the top level directory inside which the templates should be found.
dir.includes _includes Any valid directory inside of dir.input. N/A Controls the directory inside which the template includes/extends/partials/etc can be found.
dir.data _data Any valid directory inside of dir.input. N/A Controls the directory inside which the global data template files, available to all templates, can be found.
dir.output _site Any valid directory. --output Controls the directory inside which the transformed finished templates can be found.
dataTemplateEngine liquid A valid template engine or false N/A Run the data.dir global data files through this template engine before transforming it to JSON.
markdownTemplateEngine liquid A valid template engine or false N/A Run markdown through this template engine before transforming it to HTML.
htmlTemplateEngine liquid A valid template engine or false N/A Run HTML templates through this template engine before transforming it to (better) HTML.
templateFormats liquid,ejs, md,hbs, mustache,haml, pug,njk,html Any combination of these --formats Specify which type of templates should be transformed. Also available with setTemplateFormats on the Configuration API (New in Eleventy v0.2.14)
pathPrefix / A prefix directory added to links --pathprefix (New in Eleventy v0.2.11) Used by the url filter and inserted at the beginning of all href links. Use if your blog lives in a subdirectory on your web server.
passthroughFileCopy true true or false N/A Files found (that aren’t templates) from white-listed file extensions will pass-through to the output directory. Read more about Pass-through Copy.
htmlOutputSuffix -o String N/A If the input and output directory match, index.html files will have this suffix added to their output filename to prevent overwriting the template.
filters {} Object N/A (Now known as Transforms, so they’re not confused with Template Filters) Transforms can transform output on a template. Take the format function(str, outputPath) { return str; }. For example, use a transform to format an HTML file with proper whitespace. Use the addTransform method on the Configuration API to add a transform.

Configuration API

If you expose your config as a function instead of an object, we’ll pass in a config argument that you can use!

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
  return {
    dir: {
      input: "views"
    }
  };
};

This allows you further customization options using the provided helper methods.

Add Tags/Filters to Template Engines

Read more about filters.

Add custom collections

Read more about Collections: Advanced Custom Filtering and Sorting.

Add official or third-party plugins

Read more about Plugins.

Ignore files (optional)

Add an .eleventyignore file to the root of your input directory for a new line-separated list of files (or globs) that will not be processed. Paths listed in your project’s .gitignore file are automatically ignored.

Exception: node_modules will be ignored automatically if a .gitignore does not exist.

Competitors

This project aims to directly compete with all other Static Site Generators. Try out our competition:

Tests

npm run test

Major Roadmapped Features

  • Pagination
  • Tagging of content
  • Plugin system
  • Extensibility with system-wide content mapping
  • Components system for development reusability