Eleventy Kit

Eleventy Kit is a static website starter kit that combines the Eleventy static site generator with TailwindCSS and AlpineJS to produce a minified, production-ready dist folder.

What is Eleventy Kit?

Eleventy Kit is an open-source starter template for building static websites with the Eleventy (11ty) static site generator, TailwindCSS for utility-first styling, and AlpineJS for lightweight interactions. It takes source pages from src/pages and public assets from /public, processes them through Eleventy and Tailwind, and outputs a fully optimized dist directory with minified HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The repository is designed as a GitHub template, so you can click "Use this template" to bootstrap a new project without cloning and reconfiguring.

Key Features

• Eleventy static site generator — The core engine is Eleventy (11ty), with a global config and a default global layout included by default.
• TailwindCSS with purge and minification — TailwindCSS is preconfigured to scan ./src/**/*.liquid by default; production builds purge unused styles and minify the final CSS.
• AlpineJS for interactivity — AlpineJS is bundled out of the box for adding reactive components to static pages without a heavy framework.
• Automatic HTML minification — The production build minifies HTML and strips HTML comments.
• Native image lazy loading — Lazy loading is automatically added to images in the page templates.
• JavaScript minification — All JavaScript is minified during the production build.
• Simple project structure — Pages live in src/pages with a .liquid extension by default (you can switch to any supported Eleventy template language), and everything inside /public is copied to the top level of dist.

Who should use Eleventy Kit?

• Front-end developers who want a preconfigured static site pipeline with Eleventy, TailwindCSS, and AlpineJS without writing build tooling themselves.
• Designers and content creators who need a fast, clean starter to build a portfolio, blog, or marketing landing page and iterate locally with live reload on localhost:8080.
• Small teams shipping static sites that need a small output bundle and easy deployment — the repository's topic list includes Vercel, suggesting it's intended to drop onto Vercel or similar static hosts.

What can you do with Eleventy Kit?

• Launch a marketing site: Use the included default global layout and Tailwind utility classes to build a responsive landing page, then run npm run build and deploy the dist folder to any static host.
• Create a blog or documentation: Add .liquid files under src/pages — each page becomes a static HTML output; Eleventy's support for other template languages means you can use Markdown or Nunjucks if you prefer.
• Prototype quickly: Run npm run dev to get a live-reloading dev server on localhost:8080, and use AlpineJS for interactive demos without a backend.

How does Eleventy Kit work?

Three commands get you going: npm run install installs dependencies, npm run dev starts a local server with live reload, and npm run build generates the production output in dist. The starter is organized with src/pages for templates and /public for static assets; anything placed in /public is copied verbatim to the root of the build output, so an image at public/images/example.jpg is served from /images/example.jpg.

FAQ

Is Eleventy Kit free?

Yes, Eleventy Kit is an open-source starter template available on GitHub. You can click "Use this template" to create a new repository from it without paying a license fee.

What template languages does Eleventy Kit support?

Eleventy supports many template languages, and Eleventy Kit defaults to .liquid files in src/pages. You are free to use any language Eleventy supports, such as Nunjucks, Markdown, or JavaScript templates — just update the purge array in tailwind.config.js to include the new file extension.

Does Eleventy Kit minify output?

Yes. The production build (npm run build) purges and minifies CSS, minifies JavaScript, minifies HTML, and removes HTML comments. This results in a small, optimized dist folder ready for deployment.

How do I add images to my Eleventy Kit site?

Place images in the public/images directory (or any subdirectory under public). They will be copied to the top level of dist, so you can reference them via /images/example.jpg in your templates. Native lazy loading is added automatically.