New ZBlog with Eleventy

I changed to another Static Site Generator (SSG) called Eleventy (or 11ty) to create my blog (It is in the current master branch as well). I kept my previous BulmaCSS theme I made though, so the looks is still about the same.

Few things I like about 11ty:

• It has the minimal (in fact zero config) to get started! Give a Markdown file and it will genearate you a output!
• It allow you to structure your data/project in any way you like. But they do have some default naming conventions if you choose to use it.
• It supports Data Cascade to allow many ways to provide Data. For example, I can easily add a static JSON file and use it in my template!
• It supports many template libraries. It default to Liquid, but I prefer Nunjucks template library better, since it resemble Twig more and I like that syntax better.
• It has simple and overridable layout that you can use, even if you don't choose a fany template.
• It supports pagination and data collection (tags). I even able to have fine control over on permalink on how paginated files are generated and structured.
• It seems to be pretty fast. I have about 300 articles and it generated under 0.5 seconds!

Things I struggled a bit to get started:

• Their documentation is not very beginer friendly. I am not sure how to begin even after I read through few sections. I later found this Learn Eleventy From Scratch provides a excellent tutorial to get started!
• Switching to Nunjucks has thrown me off when seeking for documentation help. In the documentation, it often use Liquid syntax, and they might look the same to Nunjucks, but does not work the same. Especially when dealing with permalinks frontmatter since it allows template code there.
• The Nunjucks is really spelled that way! Don't try to correct it.
• The Nunjucks does not support date filter by default! You have to use an extra plugin!
• 11ty supports many templates, and I was suprised that I dont have to explicitly add it to the package.json dependencies explicitly!

Compare to VuePress:

• The VuePress default is gear toward for Documentation site, and it is strict on structure and the data source it can use to generate the site.
• It goes through this complex JS Hydration process that I just don't feel comfortable. It's like there things you just don't get to see behind the scene magic going on.
• When you make a simple article change, it regenerate lots of files, including JS file. It feels little weird.