twenty-ninety — Eleventy Starter Template

SHA-256: 3c5d4b1d0d951212414a1fd3d7ddda62d43a6b2ca2777f6bf15571bf55f90c03

2026-10-01T15:09:54.306Z

# Twenty Ninety [![Netlify Status](https://api.netlify.com/api/v1/badges/40e8672c-0101-4d88-8dbc-225257970fb4/deploy-status)](https://app.netlify.com/sites/twenty-ninety/deploys)

Twenty Ninety is a component-based [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) starter kit. It comes with lots of opinions, all designed to help you build websites faster (and have fun doing it)!

## Getting Started

If you want to just go for it, you can deploy this project directly to Netlify:

[![Deploy to Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/img/deploy/button.svg)](https://app.netlify.com/start/deploy?repository=https://github.com/seancdavis/twenty-ninety)

If you want to start by working on your machine, first clone the repo:

    $ git clone https://github.com/seancdavis/twenty-ninety.git your-project-name

Install dependencies:

    $ yarn install

(Note: If you prefer NPM over Yarn, you run `npm install` instead, then delete `yarn.lock`.)

Then start the development server:

    $ yarn develop

See below for a list of features and how to work with them.

## Project Goals

Eleventy is a wonderful static site generator. It's quick. It gets out of the way. It lets you work how you want to work. While that's fun and flexible, [it's not efficient](https://cobwwweb.com/increase-developer-efficiency-by-establishing-conventions).

This project exists to provide a foundation on which we can build websites consistently and efficiently over time.

As a starter kit, the benefits you derive from this setup exist only in what is provided here, at this time. That's limiting in a way, as you lose the benefit of any progress made here along the way.

Therefore, the longer-term goal with this project is to offer it as a package so you can get the benefits of updates made to the system, without losing the ability to opt-out of the (strong) opinions made here.

## Features

There is a lot going on above what Eleventy offers out of the box. Here are those features. If you have questions, feel free to [open an issue](https://github.com/seancdavis/twenty-ninety/issues/new) or [start a conversation on Twitter](https://twitter.com/seancdavis29).

Here's a list:

- [Gulp](#gulp)
- [Eleventy](#eleventy)
- [CSS](#css)
- [JavaScript](#javascript)
- [Netlify](#netlify)
- [Testing](#testing)
- [Environment Variables](#environment-variables)
- [Fonts](#fonts)
- [Components](#components)
- [Images](#images)
- [Markdown](#markdown)
- [Google Analytics](#google-analytics)
- [SEO](#seo)
- [Yarn](#yarn)

### Gulp

Eleventy offers a command to process templated files and output HTML code. Most websites require more processing, particularly with assets like CSS and JavaScript. That can make for disparate processes.

In this project, [Gulp](https://gulpjs.com/) plays the role of managing those processes together so you only have to worry about a few simple commands. The configuration can be found in `gulpfile.js`.

For convenience, all tasks are exported and can be like so:

    $ yarn gulp [task]

To see a list of tasks, run:

    $ yarn gulp --tasks

But, in general, if you're following the conventions for CSS and JS, you _should_ only need to worry about `develop` (starts a dev server) and `build` (builds static files). Both of these commands have been added to `package.json`, so that you can skip the `gulp` portion and just run:

    $ yarn develop
    $ yarn build

### Eleventy

The HTML processing uses [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/), which I hope isn't surprising, as this is currently an Eleventy starter kit!

Anything you can do with Eleventy, you can do here, too. But if you use what we have here out of the box, there are a few items to note ...

#### Eleventy Config

Eleventy's config goes into `.eleventy.js`. That file typically exports an object representing [the config values that have been adjusted](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/config/). In this case, those items have been abstracted to `eleventy.config.js`, as they are used elsewhere in the project.

Note that some defaults have changed. The two most notable are that the build directory is `dist` and the templating engine for markdown files is nunjucks, rather than liquid.

#### Eleventy Utils

When the config file begins to perform many tasks it can quickly get unwieldy. Therefore, this starter offers the benefit of Eleventy utils. Any `.js` file dropped in to the `utils` directory that isn't prefixed with an underscore or suffixed with `.spec.js` will get picked up and run as a plugin by `.eleventy.js`.

Each plugin (utility) requires a **single named export** as `default`. Check out `utils/shortcodes/markdown.js` as an example. It exports the following:

```js
exports.default = (eleventyConfig) => {
  eleventyConfig.addPairedShortcode("markdown", (input) => exports.renderMarkdown(input))
}
```

That looks just like some code that would typically be dropped into `.eleventy.js`, and that's the point. This provides a means of modularizing the plugins you provide to Eleventy.

There are a few (cool) custom shortcodes that ship with this project. They are listed near the end of the features.

### CSS

CSS is ready to go by default. It is configured to use [PostCSS](https://postcss.org/) (via a Gulp plugin), and also makes use of [Tailwind CSS](https://tailwindcss.com/).

PostCSS plugins can be added or removed from `postcss.config.js`, and Tailwind configuration can be adjusted in or removed from `tailwind.config.js`.

Any `.css` files in `src/_assets/css` will get picked up by the Gulp task and processed through PostCSS. The default is `main.css`.

The file is loaded in the `<head>` of the head of the default layout (`src/_includes/layout/head.njk`).

### JavaScript

JavaScript is built using [Webpack](https://webpack.js.org/) (via a Gulp plugin). The webpack config can be found at `webpack.config.js`.

The Gulp plugin will pick up any `.js` file in `src/_assets/js` and move it to `dist/assets/js/...`.

However, it is recommended that with the current Webpack config, you only use a single bundle. It is designed to make the global code available through an `App` object. Notice that if you start up the dev server (`yarn develop`), you can open up your console and run the following:

```js
console.log(App)
// => Module {default: {…}, __esModule: true, Symbol(Symbol.toStringTag): "Module"}

console.log(App.default)
// => {}
```

That's because that's the default export from `main.js`:

```js
export default {}
```

The main JavaScript bundle is loaded onto the page from the foot include (`src/_includes/layout/foot.njk`).

#### JavaScript Utilities

The project is also setup for injecting global utilities. The only one included by default is the _scan links_ utility (`src/_assets/js/utils/scan-links.js`). When the page is read, the link scanner looks through all anchor tags. If it determines the `href` value is to an external URL, it will add `target="_blank"` and `rel="noopener"` attributes to the tag.

If you'd like to remove this functionality, delete the file and remove the import line from `main.js`. Or, if you want to adjust the attributes that are added, you can edit the `scan-links.js` file.

### Netlify

This project is built to be deployed with [Netlify](https://netlify.com). There's even a button above to do it with just a couple clicks!

Some base configuration lives in `netlify.toml`, while others you may want to configure through the Netlify UI.

The project also brings a handful of [build plugins](https://docs.netlify.com/configure-builds/build-plugins/). Many of these are added to improve performance or accessibility in production. There's also a local plugin for running tests prior to running the build. You can see the list of plugins used in `netlify.toml`. Most are well-documented in their README files.

### Testing

[Jest](https://jestjs.io/) is used for testing both server-side and client-side JavaScript code. The convention in this project is to append test files with `.spec.js`.

The tests can be run with:

    $ yarn test

There is a local Netlify build plugin that runs these tests automatically before the build on Netlify. You can remove the plugin if you don't want it to run.

### Environment Variables

I prefer [direnv](https://direnv.net/) for managing environment variables, but you can use whatever you'd prefer. A list of environment variables can be found in `.envrc-sample`.

### Fonts

Fonts are included by default in `src/_assets/css/global/fonts.css`.

If you use either local or [Google Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/), the Netlify build plugin `netlify-plugin-subfont` will process the fonts and create subfont versions of those files, increasing performance in production.

### Components

Components are one of the coolest features of this project. They are included as an Eleventy utility, but there's some magic that happens behind the scenes.

Components each get their own directory inside `src/_components`. We'll use the button as an example here.

There must be at least one file in the directory: `[name].template.njk`. (At this time, only `.njk` components are supported.) Therefore, a button component must include a `button.template.njk` file.

It gets rendered on the page using a `component` shortcode. For example:

```njk
{% component "button", url = "/", label = "Click Me!", theme = "blue" %}
```

The first argument tells the shortcode which component to render (`button`), while the rest are sent as variables to the component.

But sometimes you want to transform those properties (variables) before rendering and don't want to have to do that in a view file. That's where transformers come in. If you create a file at `[name].transformer.js` (e.g. `button.transformer.js`), the properties will get passed through the default export, which should return the transformed components. For example, the button transformer sets a default `theme` property if it is missing. That way we can safely use the `theme` variable in the template.

Lastly, if you want to bring custom styles, you can add a `[name].styles.css` file to the directory and it will get picked up automatically by `main.css`. Note that these styles are not automatically scoped.

### Images

`image` is another component (`src/_components/image`). It is designed to work with [Imgix](https://www.imgix.com). It is, at this time, _extremely_ opinionated, even down to the breakpoints. It is undergoing a transformation, as I work with the Imgix team to develop a more flexible solution. You're welcome to dig through the transformer to see how it works. Or you can remove and add your own.

### Markdown

Markdown is [supported as a templating language with Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/languages/markdown/). However, it can't be rendered in other templates. To remedy that problem, this project brings a `markdown` shortcode to render markdown within other template files. For example, in a nunjucks file, you could write the following:

```njk
<div>
  {% markdown %}
## This is a heading
  {% endmarkdown %}
</div>
```

And voila! The markdown will be rendered!

This feature uses [markdown-it](https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it) and can be found in `utils/shortcodes/markdown.js`. It also supports syntax highlighting via [Highlight.js](https://highlightjs.org/), bringing in the GitHub theme by default.

### Google Analytics

Google Analytics are loaded in a script included by `main.js` (`src/_assets/js/lib/analytics.js`). This makes use of the [analytics library](https://www.npmjs.com/package/analytics). You may swap out Google for other plugins, or take a different approach to loading analytics on your site.

If you stick with Google, it expects the following conditions to be true with environment variables:

- `ELEVENTY_ENV` to be missing or set to production.
- `GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID` to be set as the ID for the GA account.
- `ANALYTICS_APP_NAME` to be set as the name of your project (this is arbitrary, but should be adjusted).

### SEO

SEO is another component offered out of the box. It provides a means of writing SEO meta tags to the page based on page-specific data, with sensible defaults.

The defaults can be set in `src/_data/seo_defaults.json`.

The component gets loaded in the head (`src/_includes/layout/head.njk`). Notice that it sends the `title`, `image`, and `description`, but optionally allows for overrides by using the `seo` property.

This means that pages using this head include can override with the following structure:

```md
---
title: "Page Title"
description: "Page Description"
image: "/page-image.jpg"
seo:
  title: "SEO Override Title"
  description: "SEO Override Description"
  image: "/seo-override-image.jpg"
  og:
    title: "OpenGraph Override Title"
    description: "OpenGraph Override Description"
    image: "/og-override-image.jpg"
    type: webpage
  twitter:
    title: "Twitter Override Title"
    description: "Twitter Override Description"
    image: "/twitter-override-image.jpg"
    card: summary
---

...
```

Here are items of note:

- Twitter first falls back to OpenGraph, then to the overrides, then to the page, then to the global defaults.
- OpenGraph falls back to the overrides, then to the page, then to the global defaults.
- It expects images to be local, as it prepends the base url to the image path.

### Yarn v NPM

I prefer [Yarn](https://yarnpkg.com/) over the more traditional NPM as a dependency manager. If you prefer NPM, it's easy enough to switch over. Simply run `npm install` and then delete `yarn.lock`. You should see a `package-lock.json` file appear in the project root, which means you're good to go! There's an NPM alternative to any yarn command mentioned here.

## Contributing

If you'd like what you see here but have found a bug or would like to add a feature, super! And thank you very much for your support and contribution. To do so, have at it. Fork the repository and create a PR with your proposed change.

If you have an idea or found a bug, but can't or don't want to work it, feel free to [create an issue](https://github.com/seancdavis/twenty-ninety/issues/new).

If you'd like to chat about the project, the best way to start the conversation is with [a message on Twitter](https://twitter.com/seancdavis29).