Eleventy Duo is a minimal Eleventy theme for personal blogs that generates a static site from Markdown content with built-in RSS, tags, pagination, and SEO metadata.
What is Eleventy Duo?
Eleventy Duo is a free, open-source Eleventy theme for personal blogs, created by yinkakun. It takes Markdown files for blog posts and pages as input and outputs a fully static website with features like RSS feed, tag pages, pagination, and syntax-highlighted code. The theme runs on Eleventy (11ty) as the static site generator and uses Webpack for asset bundling, PostCSS with Autoprefixer, PostCSS Preset Env, PurgeCSS, and CSSNano for CSS processing. It is licensed under the MIT License and has a live demo at https://eleventyduo.netlify.app.
Key Features
- Fully responsive — The layout adapts to mobile, tablet, and desktop screen sizes without custom configuration.
- SEO metadata and Open Graph tags — Pages include meta descriptions and Open Graph tags for social sharing, controlled from front matter and site data.
- Optimized Lighthouse score — The theme is designed to maximize performance and accessibility scores in Google Lighthouse.
- Cache busting — Built-in asset versioning appends content hashes to filenames so browsers fetch updated CSS and JavaScript.
- 404 page — A custom 404 error page is included out of the box.
- RSS feed for posts — Automatically generates an RSS feed from all blog posts in the posts collection.
- Tags support — Posts can be grouped by front matter tags, and the theme creates tag index pages.
- Pagination support — Built-in pagination for listing posts across multiple pages.
- Syntax highlighting with PrismJS — Code blocks in Markdown get highlighted via PrismJS without extra setup.
Who is it for?
- Personal bloggers — Use it to publish a minimal blog with Markdown, RSS, and tagging without maintaining a content management system.
- Developers — Use it as a starter for an Eleventy site because it preconfigures Webpack, PostCSS, and a production build pipeline.
- Content editors — Edit content through the preconfigured Forestry CMS, which commits changes to the repository.
What can you do with Eleventy Duo?
- Write and publish blog posts — Drop Markdown files in the src/posts folder; front matter controls title, date, tags, and an optional description.
- Customize the site — Update data/site.json to change site title, description, URL, navigation, and social links, and replace the favicon and social image in src/images.
- Manage content with a CMS — Use Forestry to edit the home page, about page, posts, generic pages, and global site data without touching code.
How does Eleventy Duo work?
The repository can be generated from the GitHub template, then cloned and set up with yarn install. You run yarn dev to serve the site locally and yarn build to generate a production version in the public directory. The site content lives in Markdown files and data files that are compiled by Eleventy into static HTML.
Pricing
Eleventy Duo is free and open source under the MIT License. There are no paid tiers or subscriptions.
FAQ
Is Eleventy Duo free?
Yes, Eleventy Duo is open source under the MIT License, so you can use, modify, and distribute it freely, including in commercial projects.
Does Eleventy Duo include a CMS?
It is preconfigured to work with Forestry, a git-based CMS. You can import the repository into Forestry and edit pages and posts via a web interface.
How do I deploy an Eleventy Duo site?
The recommended hosting is Netlify. Create a new site from the repository, set the build command to yarn build, and set the publish directory to public. Netlify rebuilds automatically when new commits are pushed.
What static site generator does Eleventy Duo use?
It uses Eleventy (also called 11ty) as the static site generator, with Webpack for bundling and PostCSS for CSS processing.
Can I create custom pages with Eleventy Duo?
Yes, you can create generic pages using a base layout. Add a new Markdown file with a layout: base front matter and a permalink, and the page will be generated at that route.
