Eleventy Tamil Kavithai is an Eleventy (11ty) blog starter template that collects and displays Tamil poems, quotes, and status messages from Markdown content.
What is Eleventy Tamil Kavithai?
Eleventy Tamil Kavithai is a static site generator template built on Eleventy and Markdown, designed for publishing a personal collection of Tamil kavithai, quotes, and status messages. It takes Markdown files from a posts folder and outputs a static website with PWA support, an Atom RSS feed, sitemap, and robots.txt. The template is a modified version of the eleventy-stylus-blog-theme by ar363, customized by developer mskian for personal use. It includes features such as a toggleable dark theme, tags as taxonomy, and custom shortcodes for images and text copying.
Key Features
- 100% Lighthouse scores — The template is optimized to achieve perfect scores in performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO.
- Toggleable dark theme — Visitors can switch between light and dark modes, with the preference saved in
localStorage. - Official Eleventy plugins — Uses the navigation plugin for menu generation and the RSS plugin to create an Atom feed.
- PWA and offline support — Includes a
manifest.json, icons, and a service worker so the site works offline and can be installed. - Custom shortcodes — Provides an
imageshortcode for responsive WebP images, adownloadshortcode for image downloads, and acopytextshortcode for copyable text blocks. - SEO and meta management — Includes meta tags, schema markup, sitemap generation, robots.txt, and inline minified CSS and JavaScript.
- Flying pages integration — The flying-pages library preloads inner page links for instant navigation.
- Speed optimization — Uses inline minified CSS and JS via Eleventy quick tips, plus optimized WebP images.
Who is it for?
- Tamil poetry collectors — To maintain an organized blog of favorite kavithai and quotes.
- Minimal-blog enthusiasts — For developers who want a fast, lightweight static site with PWA capabilities.
- Eleventy learners — For those who want a working example of custom shortcodes, plugins, and service worker integration.
What can you do with Eleventy Tamil Kavithai?
- Publish Tamil quotes and poems — Create posts in Markdown and use the
yarn newpostcommand to scaffold new entries. - Add interactive buttons — Enable the copy-text button per post with
copykavithai: trueorcopytext: truein the front matter. - Optimize images — Place images in the
imagesfolder and use theimageshortcode to generate responsive WebP versions. - Customize site settings — Update
_data/site.jsfor site information,manifest.jsonfor app metadata, and service worker for offline caching.
How does the template work?
The template follows a standard Eleventy workflow: clone the repository, install dependencies with yarn, run yarn dev for local development, and yarn build for production output. Posts are stored as Markdown in the posts folder, while additional pages go in the pages folder. The .eleventy.js file configures shortcodes and build behavior.
FAQ
Is Eleventy Tamil Kavithai free to use?
Yes, the template is released under the MIT license, so it is free for personal and commercial use with attribution.
Does it support languages other than Tamil?
The template is written for Tamil content but is not language-locked. You can replace the content and site metadata to use it for any language.
How do I add a new post?
Run yarn newpost to scaffold a new Markdown file, then edit it in the posts folder. The post title and front matter control display.
Does it include a contact page?
Yes, the template supports non-post pages like About and Contact, which can be added in the pages folder.
