Blog

Issue
89

Highlights in this issue:

  • Statically awesome collaboration
  • Speeding up your site
  • Why Eleventy
  • Debugging with AI

· 3 releases · 6 posts · 7 sites

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A note from Bob:

Milestones have been crossed here! As of this writing, there are now 501 blog post authors, having written 1,706 blog posts, and there are 1,501 sites built with Eleventy on the Showcase page. Onward!

We now have a date for the relaunch of the Build Awesome Kickstarter campaign. I recently received an email with this news: "We have a new launch date for the Build Awesome Kickstarter! Mark your calendars: Tuesday, April 28, 2026. Click that link and save the project to get notified.

On a totally separate note, I've been agonizing, as one does, over a talk that I'll be giving this Saturday at North Bay Python in lovely Petaluma, California. It's titled "While I've changed gears every 4-5 years, in retirement, I've managed to find my web development tribe." I've got all the slides done and am getting happier with the outline of a script. And yes, it culminates with the work I do on this site with this amazing community. I'll share the recording when it becomes available.

Highlights

Statically awesome collaboration. Zach, in Collaborative Editing as Progressive Enhancement, outlines how Build Awesome Pro plans to tackle the challenges of implementing and deploying collaborative editing features for static sites in ways that retain static output, are deployable anywhere, and avoid vendor lock-in.

Speed up your site. Ryan Gittings provides some performance improvement tips in his post, Speeding Up Large 11ty Builds on Netlify. Some of the tips are specific to Netlify, but it has some goodies worth checking out.

Why Eleventy. Tom MacWright makes the case for why he moved from Jekyll to Eleventy in his post, Eleventy. Tom is prioritizing simplicity, longevity, and end-user speed. Those are just a few of the things that make so many of us love Eleventy.

Debugging with AI. Nicholas Clooney did some debugging recently, using AI. He recounts his experience, not all of which is good, in The Limits of AI and Where Humans Shine. I have had a couple of similar experiences, yet I am also finding some good uses for it.

Until next time...