I'd like to think I know Eleventy pretty well. I've written about it here a few times, this site is built on Eleventy, I've presented on it, but I certainly don't think I know everything about it. That being said, when I got my copy of "Eleventy by Example" by Bryan Robinson, my expectation was that I'd be reading it to get his take on teaching Eleventy but not really learning terribly much. I was wrong.
One of the strengths of Eleventy is how flexible it is. There's no "One Way" of Eleventy, but rather you're given the flexibility to approach projects in ways that make sense for your (or your team's) skills and strengths. This is why I fell in love with it in the first place. If Eleventy didn't support something out of the box, I had no concern I'd be able to add my customization with no trouble.
Going into his book, however, I was surprised, again and again, at his approach to solving common tasks in Eleventy. In nearly every chapter, I saw a new (to me) way of working with Eleventy. Not only did I learn more, but I actually found myself liking Eleventy even more.
The book does a great job of using multiple different types of projects as a way of teaching various parts of Eleventy. In some ways, it combines one of my favorite types of technical books (cookbooks that assume you know the basics already) with a general introduction.
I would absolutely recommend the book, even if you've already started with Eleventy, as both a way to flesh out your understanding as well as a way to get inspiration for future work.
Here's the table of contents, and if you buy via the link below I get a few cents, so thank you in advance. ;)
- Setting Up Your Website
- Adding Data to Your 11ty Website
- Deploying to a Static Site Host
- Building a Blog with Collections
- Creating Custom Shortcodes to Add Mixed Media to Markdown
- Building a Photography Site with the 11ty Image Plugin
- Building a Podcast Website with 11ty Plugins and Custom Outputs
- Creating a Static-Search with 11ty Serverless and Algolia
- Integrating 11ty with a Headless CMS
- Creating Custom 11ty Plugins
