Why I Rebuilt My Site with Eleventy (11ty)

After years of working in the manufacturing and automation industry, I decided it was time to start sharing my knowledge and experience. I tried several platforms like WordPress and Ghost, but I was never fully satisfied—I wanted something more handcrafted and tailored to my needs.

So, I made the decision to rebuild my personal site from the ground up. It took quite a bit of time to get everything working the way I wanted, especially since I'm not really a web developer. There's still room for improvement and optimization, but for now, I'm happy with how it's coming together.

I wanted something fast, flexible, and minimal—without sacrificing control or maintainability. That led me to Eleventy (11ty).

What I Needed

My goals were simple:

• Speed – both in development and performance.
• Control – over structure, styling, and content.
• Simplicity – no bloated front-end frameworks or slow build tools.
• Markdown – easy blog writing with clean content.

Eleventy checked all the boxes.

Why Eleventy?

Eleventy is a static site generator that doesn’t lock you into a specific framework. Here’s why I picked it:

🧩 Flexibility

Eleventy lets you write in Markdown, Nunjucks, Liquid, or even JavaScript templates. I’m not stuck with a monolithic setup—I can use the right tool for the right job.

⚡ Performance

It generates plain HTML. That means no client-side rendering bloat, no waiting for hydration, and blazing-fast load times.

🧘 Minimal by Default

Eleventy doesn’t assume anything about your front end. I have full control over styling, scripts, and structure. That’s ideal for me—especially since I'm using SCSS, and custom JavaScript for dark mode and analytics.

What’s Next?

This blog will be a space where I share:

• Insights into automation software and workflows
• Practical code snippets and tutorials
• Thoughts on tools and technologies that make development more efficient

Thanks for reading — and stay tuned for more!