Switching to Eleventy

When I first set up my personal website it was powered by WordPress. It did the job for a while, but I soon found myself frustrated by the overhead and the need for constant updates. I wanted something simpler and easier to control, so I moved the site over to Jekyll. That felt like a good step at the time. Jekyll gave me a static site generator that was light, fast and far less of a burden to maintain.

After a couple of years I decided to make another change. This time I switched to Eleventy. The move has so far been a positive one. Eleventy feels more flexible than Jekyll and gives me more control over collections, templates and data without forcing me into a particular structure. I can keep things simple when I want to but also extend the build in useful ways.

One thing that has stayed constant is my choice of styling. From WordPress through to Jekyll and now Eleventy I have stuck with Tailwind. It fits well with the way I like to build websites. The utility classes keep my HTML lean and make it easy to apply consistent design decisions. I do not need to switch context into separate stylesheets or manage a heavy CSS framework. Tailwind just works.

Looking back, each change has simplified my workflow. Moving away from WordPress removed the need for a database and a server-side stack. Leaving Jekyll for Eleventy has given me more freedom to structure the site around my own content and priorities. And keeping Tailwind throughout has provided a sense of continuity. The site might have changed engines a couple of times but the way it looks and feels has remained familiar.