For 2021 I wanted to switch to a new blog engine. GatsbyJS had served me well the last couple of years I’ve been using it… but there was a huge number of dependencies with the NPM packages I used (mainly due to the theme). I’d get constant pings from Github Dependabot to update packages by approving pull requests.
I also wanted something simpler. Easy to build (and faster), less issues with dependencies, and super easy to style and tweak. After seeing some buzz from other web developers and a quick read of the documentation I chose Eleventy (or 11ty for short). Eleventy calls itself a “simpler static site generator” and it lives up to its catch phrase.
With the switch to 11ty my blog now has 3 NPM packages vs 70+ previously. It’s very simple in comparison. There are no service workers, ReactJS components or inline CSS. Instead it’s output is simple HTML with a CSS style sheet generated from your choice of template language.
The entire minimal styling, build and migration of content took less than a month in very little of my spare time to complete (even with a couple of weeks of holidays during that month).