Eleventy Not So Minimal Blog Starter is a starter project for building a website and blog with the Eleventy static site generator, bundling navigation, categories, image optimisation, SEO metadata, Nunjucks templates, and Sass compilation out of the box.
What is Eleventy Not So Minimal Blog Starter?
Eleventy Not So Minimal Blog Starter is a GitHub-hosted starter repository by mangamaui that provides a pre-configured Eleventy site with blog capabilities. You take it as input by cloning the repository, running npm install, and editing the _data/metadata.json file with your site's details; it produces a fully static website with a blog that can be deployed to any static host. The starter runs on Eleventy, a JavaScript-based static site generator, and is designed to be more feature-complete than the official minimal starter.
Key Features
- Site navigation — Uses the eleventy-navigation plugin to manage navigation menus across pages.
- Blog categories — Adds category support and category-based navigation so posts can be grouped by topic.
- Image optimisation — Integrates Eleventy-img to process and optimise images automatically during the build.
- SVG icons — Includes svg-icon-sprite for creating and using SVG icon sprites in templates.
- SEO — Ships with sitemap generation and metadata configuration for search engine visibility.
- Date handling — Uses Luxon for reliable date and time formatting in templates.
- Templating — Uses Nunjucks, a Jinja-like templating engine, for building page layouts.
- Styles — Includes Sass (SCSS) and npm scripts to compile styles into CSS.
- Extras — Provides a set of Eleventy configurations, filters, and shortcodes to extend the build.
Who is it for?
- Static site developers — to scaffold a new Eleventy blog quickly without starting from a blank folder.
- Bloggers — who want a static site with no CMS and need built-in SEO and image optimisation.
- Eleventy learners — to see a practical example of navigation, categories, and custom shortcodes in a small project.
What can you do with it?
- Create a personal blog — clone the starter, adjust metadata, and start publishing posts with categories.
- Build a portfolio site — the base templates and styling can be adapted for portfolio content beyond blog posts.
- Learn Eleventy patterns — study how the starter implements navigation, image optimisation, and Sass integration for your own projects.
How does it work?
After cloning the repository, run npm install to fetch dependencies, edit _data/metadata.json to set site name and description, then run npm start to serve the site locally in development mode. For production, run npm run build to output a static site ready for deployment. A debug mode with DEBUG=* npx eleventy is also available for troubleshooting builds.
