11ty Boilerplate

Get started

Ensure you have Node.js version 20 or higher installed. This is required to properly run the project.

Create an .env file in the root of the project and set the LOCALE variable, which is necessary for the date filter functionality. For example, you would add LOCALE=en-US to your .env file.

With your .env file configured, proceed with setting up the project:

1. Install dependencies with npm install.
2. Start the development server with npm run start.

Production build

For production builds, execute npm run production, which includes:

• Minification of HTML.
• CSS purge (all CSS is purged and then added inline).

To test the production build locally, run npm run start-production. This sets NODE_ENV=production and allows you to test HTML minification and CSS purging on your development server.

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CSS and Styling

For CSS, we use PostCSS with a custom configuration that includes Tailwind CSS and a few other plugins. All CSS files reside in the src/assets/css directory. The main CSS file is global.css, which orchestrates the inclusion of all our styles.

PostCSS allows us to use modern CSS features like nesting and to write future-proof CSS. It also enables us to use a variety of plugins to optimize our styles. In the end, all CSS is transformed to vanilla CSS that is compatible with the browsers defined in our browserslist object in the package.json file.

Architecture

Inside the blocks, layout and utilites folders, you can place your globally available classes. All those are automatically imported into global.css via @import-glob, as long they reside there and start with an underscore. The CSS you write is sorted via Cascade Layers. This way, utilities may easily override layout styles, but block/component styles have the last word.

Utility classes & design tokens

For generating basic utility classes, we utilize Tailwind in stripped down way. Basically, every utility is disabled, and we only enable the ones we need. By default, these are text & background colors, font family, font sizes, font weights, line height and stacks.

Creating new utilities

As an example, we will create a new utility class for letter-spacing.

1. Create a new file in assets/design-tokens called letter-spacing.js.

2. Add your key-value pairs to the file.

You may also import and use js functions like interpolate or calculateTypeScale from utopia-core

export const letterSpacing = {
  tight: "-0.05em",
  normal: "0",
  wide: "0.05em",
};

3. Import your object in tailwind.config.js and apply it to the letterSpacing key in the theme object.:

New design tokens need to be applied to Tailwind's reserved keys, you can look up the key in the Tailwind CSS documentation.

import { letterSpacing } from "./src/design-tokens/letter-spacing.js";

export default {
  ...
  theme: {
    ...
    letterSpacing: letterSpacing
  }
}

4. Enable the utility in tailwind.config.js by adding it to the corePlugins array:

export default {
  ...
  corePlugins: [
    ...
    "letterSpacing"
  ]
}

5. Generate CSS Custom Properties from your design tokens. (Optional, but recommended)

This way, you can also use your design tokens without using utility classes.

In the plugins array of tailwind.config.js, add the following to groups array the first plugin function:

const groups = [
  ...,
  { key: "letterSpacing", prefix: "tracking" }
];

The key property is the key of the Tailwind theme object, and the prefix property is any string you want to prefix your Custom Properties with:

/* Output */
:root {
  --tracking-tight: -0.05em;
  --tracking-normal: 0;
  --tracking-wide: 0.05em;
}

Using media queries

For media queries, we use custom media queries that are defined in src/assets/css/_media.css.

/* src/assets/css/_media.css */
@custom-media --sm (width >= 25em);
@custom-media --md (width >= 40em);

You can use these media queries in your CSS like this:

.my-class {
  color: red;

  @media (--sm) {
    color: blue;
  }
}

CSS Purge Safelist

In production mode, all CSS is purged to remove any unused classes. If however, there are specific classes that should not be purged during the production build process, like dynamically added classes, they can be added to a safelist. To manage this safelist, edit the file utils/transforms/css-purge-inline.js.

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Client-side JavaScript

All JavaScript files reside in the src/assets/scripts directory. For Client-side Javascript bundling, we use esbuild. This allows us to install and use npm packages in our client-side JavaScript files:

// Import functions from npm packages
import { myFunction } from "my-npm-package";

// Import functions from other files
import { myOtherFunction } from "./my-other-file.js";

// Import other files as whole
import "other-directory/my-other-file.js";

For embedding JavaScript from the directory in your Nunjucks templates, use the following shortcode:

{% script src="my-file.js" %}
{% script src="other-directory/my-file.js" %}

Global utilites (filters, shortcodes, etc.)

We have a few global utilities like nunjucks filters, or global filters or shortcodes. They are all located in the src/utils directory.

For example, to use the readableDate filter in your Nunjucks templates:

{{ sampleDate | readableDate({ month: "short", day: "numeric" }) }}

Ensure that LOCALE is defined in your .env file to display dates in the correct language.

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SVG Icons

SVG icons should be placed in the src/icons directory. A single combined icon file will be generated from these icons, allowing you to reference them easily throughout your project. We have implemented a shortcode for embedding these SVG icons that requires the icon property. The alt text and width attributes are optional but recommended for accessibility and layout purposes.

Here's how to use the shortcode to insert an SVG icon:

{% icon icon="github", alt="Github", width="2rem" %}

This shortcode will insert the GitHub icon with an alternative text "Github" and a width of 2 rem.

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Webfonts

For webfonts, a different approach is taken:

• Place font files in the src/fonts folder.
• Include font-face declarations and preloading instructions in the font.css file, which is also located in the src/fonts folder.

This separation ensures that font styling is managed independently from other styles, optimizing loading times and maintainability.

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How to archive a year

1. Copy archive.md from the previous year inside src/pages/{year}
2. Inside src/_data/years.json, add the year to the array of years and increment currentYear by one
3. Inside src/_data/navigation.json, adjust the year inside the url path of the link to the archive. You can update/remove the other nav items as you like.