An extremely simple and lightweight template for building a website with blog and CMS using the Eleventy static site generator, with deployment to Netlify.
Use it as a basis for your own projects or as an easy way to get started building static sites with Eleventy.
Based on the Eleventy Base Blog repo (see there for additional info on Eleventy usage).
- Sample pages and blog with tag support
- Pre-builds and minifies your HTML
- CSS 2kb minified, inline for fastest page render
- Responsive CSS Grid layout, with fallbacks (see Browser Support)
- Uses Markdown files for content (works with Netlify CMS)
- Uses Liquid and/or Nunjucks templates for layout
- Contains no boilerplate JS or other bloat (100% framework free)
- Optional Javascipt pipeline for minified inline scripts
- Continuous Integration (CI) workflow
Clicking the button above will deploy a copy the demo website to your Netlify account (you can create an account during this process if you don't have one) and everything needed for running the CMS:
- A new repository in your GitHub account with the code
- Full Continuous Deployment to Netlify's global CDN network
- Control users and access with Netlify Identity
- Manage content with Netlify CMS
- Process form data with Netlify Forms
After deploying this project, Netlify Identity will add you as a CMS user and will email you an invite. It is not necessary to accept this invite if you wish to use an OAuth provider (e.g. Github) to manage authentication for your CMS. It is recommended to use this method of authentication as it removes the need for an email & password to log in to the CMS and is generally more secure. You will need to add an OAuth provider in your Netlify app settings under "Settings" > "Identity" > "External providers".
Next, navigate to /admin on your site, choose your OAuth provider from the
login box and you should then be logged into your CMS. Cool huh?
Now you're all set, and you can start editing content!
If you change the repo that was created at deploy time from public to private, you'll need to regenerate your token, as the token generated using the deploy to Netlify button can only access public repositories. To regenerate your token, head to "Settings" in your Netlify site dashboard, go to the "Identity" section, then scroll to "Services" where you'll see an "Edit settings" button. Click that and you'll see a text link to "Generate access token in GitHub".
If you need any help with setting up Netlify CMS, you can reach out to the Netlify team in the Netlify CMS Gitter.
git clone https://github.com/danurbanowicz/eleventy-netlify-boilerplate.git my-blog-name
cd my-blog-name
Specifically have a look at .eleventy.js to see if you want to configure any Eleventy options differently.
npm install
This file contains your site title and author details.
npx eleventy
Or build automatically when a template changes:
npx eleventy --watch
Or in debug mode:
DEBUG=* npx eleventy
This is an ongoing project and I welcome any feedback, suggestions or contributions.
Please use the issue tracker to let me know about any bugs or feature requests, or alternatively make a pull request.
If you need any help with setting up Netlify CMS, you can reach out to the Netlify team in the Netlify CMS Gitter.
This template uses relatively new features such as CSS Grid layout and CSS Custom Properties therefore browser support is still patchy. You should consider providing fallbacks for older or less capable browsers when using this template in a production environment.