How this Site is Built

Context

This blog is built with the Eleventy.js framework.

Markdown

Most of my website is just Markdown that I've typed into a text editor and uploaded to GitHub.

That's not the interesting bit, so I won't get into much detail here.

Instead, let's talk about the bits that aren't Markdown. It's important to me that almost everything I work on is as simple as possible. So for the less simple bits, perhaps I had an interesting reason.

What Else Is There?

Plain Text

Let's start with an easy one. There's no Markdown specification for a SECURITY.TXT file.

So instead, I carve off that bit of the repository, and just serve the raw path and text of /.well-known/security.txt.

I let Eleventy know that's what needs to happen by a line in .eleventy.js:

  eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy(".well-known");  // security.txt

Art with JavaScript

I make art with code, using the P5.js JavaScript framework.

To support this, and some other nonense, I need to serve JavaScript, CSS and image files unmodified:

  eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy("css");  // Static files
  eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy("js");
  eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy("img");

This bit may go away in the near future, as I have added enough static art that I need to add a separate CDN (Content Delivery Network) soon.

Clever Bits in JavaScript (plugins)

There's some bits of the site that I don't want to type over and over again. Most notably - the site navigation and RSS feeds. Thankfully, Eleventy has plugins for that:

const eleventyNavigationPlugin = require("@11ty/eleventy-navigation");
const pluginRss = require("@11ty/eleventy-plugin-rss");

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