Now that my year long Nature Diary project is complete, it's time to get back to plain old blogging. (The two things are not mutually exclusive, of course, but I inadvertently made it that way.)
But in thinking about blogging again, I remembered some of the frustrations I have with this website, and am compelled to fix them. And by fix a few problems I mean, start over from scratch.
This site is built using the static site generator Eleventy. I love Eleventy. But over the past year Zach has released a whole new version along with new, improved plugins, so I want to bring the site up to date.
I built this site by reading several excellent tutorials, using a startup template and adding far too many hunks of code from other amazing Eleventy sites. The net result however is that I don't really understand the code behind my own site, so that needs to change as well.
Version 1 of the site met my main criteria at the time:
- get all my old blogs into one place
- have a way to easily publish new posts
- be a lean, mean, fast, lightweight personal website
- have a generally appealing look to it
This next version is going to build on those strengths, but in a way that I am more in-tune with the code, so I am not afraid to make tweaks and enhancements.
So here are my new goals:
The Project #
- Build the site in Eleventy 3.1+ completely from scratch. Don't add anything that I do not understand.
- Don't even use the Eleventy-base-blog starter template (although I'm still wavering about this one!)
- Document the process as I go and cite all my sources. (I notice that all the tutorials and walkthroughs on the internet are several years old, using Eleventy 2.0 or earlier. I want to bring this up to date.)
The Use Cases #
- The concept is shifting even more towards a digital garden. Half baked thoughts and ideas are OK.
- bring even more of my whole self to the blog. Document my new passions, from crochet to gardening to stamps and lawn bowls as well.
- maybe add photo galleries?
- definitely add week notes!
- Soundtracks? Book Lists? Why not?
Writing Workflow #
- refactor the code and file structures so I better understand the flow from markdown files to a final html page. Not necessarily adopting Nunchuk macros for code snippets but understand how I could do this when it makes sense.
Eleventy #
- Optimized images using the updated Eleventy-img plugin
- more structured documents and more rigourous use of front matter like how Miriam does it.
- create pages for major project tags
- implement search without using Netlify functions
CSS #
- understand it! Implement a clean design without copying whole hog from someone else.
This is an incomplete, poorly structured list at this point. But it's a start!