Minimal 11ty Starter

A very minimal eleventy starter using Tailwind CSS for styling.

It features a smart navigation component that sets active states automatically.

For beginners and/or when you need a simple static site and don't want to duplicate your navigation header and set active states for the nth time.

Features

🦴 As minimal as possible
⚡️ Active states in the navigation are automatically set based on the current url.
💨 Add a couple of lines to any page and it will appear in the navigation. (Check how to below)
🗓 A very simple blog structure because why not
🍪 Example for including json data on contact page
💜 Tailwind CSS

Live Demo

---

Getting Started

1. Clone this repo

git clone [email protected]:tomreinert/minimal-11ty-tailwind-starter.git mysite

2. Change into the working directory

cd mysite

3. Install dependencies

npm install

4. Work locally

Watches for changes and serves locally on http://localhost:8080

npm run serve

5. Create a production build

npm run build

How To: Navigation

The top navigation is the only feature in this starter and lives in /src/_includes/components/navigation.njk.

It looks for the eleventyNavigation object in pages and adds them to the navigation bar. It also checks whether the site's url is in the currently opened url and highlights the navigation item accordingly. This even works for subpages. So if you're on /blog/post/ the Blog nav item will still be active.

Adding links to the navigation

Add the eleventyNavigation object to any page and it will appear in the navigation. Optionally set the order of your items. Check the 11ty docs for more information about the navigation plugin.

---
eleventyNavigation:
  key: Your Page Name
  order: 1
---

Changing the navigation item styles

The script in /_includes/components/navigation.njk checks if a navigation item is active and styles it accordingly. Let's dissect the code:

<a
 href="{{ entry.url }}"

 // Base styles for navigation items
 class="py-1 px-2 rounded mr-4 inline-block

 // Styles for the active navigation item
 {{'bg-white text-black' if entry.url in page.url

 // Styles for default navigation item
 else 'text-gray-400 hover:text-gray-100'}}">
 {{ entry.title }}
</a>

How To: Blog

Add a page in _src/blog/posts and it will appear in the post list.

Credits

Bryan L. Robinson for explaining how to create the active navigation state

https://statickit.com/guides/eleventy-tailwind - I set up the project according to this guide

https://11ty.io/

https://tailwindcss.com/