In Case You Missed It: 2023
Series: 2023, 2022, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013
2023 has been one hell-for-leather roller coaster of a year.
Down for the count
In late April, Eleventy lost its full time sponsorship in the midst of Netlify’s struggle to survive the gauntlet of late-stage venture capitalism.
I burned out pretty hard during this transition. We could go back and forth about the details of how it was handled but as things move forward it doesn’t seem productive to rehash it (I wrote and deleted this section many times). The most productive summary I can offer is that the Silicon Valley mentality of hockey-stick hyper-growth (or death) is simultaneously unhealthy and needlessly destructive for all involved parties.
I do feel a bit of shame in admitting to myself that despite all of the precautions I took while administering Eleventy as an independent project, Eleventy almost died this year—and the responsibility for that is mine.
Don’t call it a comeback
In happier news, in August I joined CloudCannon as a developer advocate and they are donating part of my time to Eleventy’s development. Coupled with their four-day work week 🏆🏆🏆, I’ve been using a majority of Fridays for Eleventy development too (per my discretion).
CloudCannon are incredibly supportive of the project and Eleventy certainly would not have rebounded as quickly as it did without their help.
Importantly, CloudCannon’s healthier work-life balance and subsequent mental shift rebalanced my perspective of Eleventy away from something that needed to compete to survive to a much healthier and enjoyable place.
Eleventy in 2023
Eleventy still had a pretty great year despite our setbacks.
- We had 2.9 million downloads in 2023 (+34.36% year over year).
- We crossed cumulative download milestones for 6 million and 7 million and we’re eyeing 8 million soon!
- We shipped stable v2.0 🏆
- We looked to refocus the project with Project Slipstream and published our first Community Survey to get help prioritizing those goals (with results)
- We have shipped a few v3.0 alpha releases with support for ESM and asynchronous configuration.
And that’s not all: we have a few surprises in the hopper planned for 2024 that I’m very excited about.
A few good Blog Posts
Most popular (by total pageviews, ×2):
Most hopeful: The Tension And Future Of Jamstack
My personal favorite: Educational, Sensational, Inspirational, Foundational Web Development Reading List
Controversial: Netlify’s Disingenuous Survey-based Attack On Next.js (And Eleventy, Too)
Underrated: JavaScript, Community
The hardest one to write: The Next Phase of Eleventy: Return of the Side Project
Thank You Notes
I have a lot to be thankful for in 2023 and my family goes at the top of that list. I had so many long lunchtime talks with my wife as we navigated through this year. She has been incredibly patient as she sits on the receiving end of privileged-dude-with-a-podcast-microphone levels of venting about tech drama.
A big thank you to new CloudCannon friends Christopher Wingate, George Phillips, Liam Bigelow, Mike Neumegen, Olivia Nicholson, David Large (and others).
To everyone in the Eleventy community, especially: Peter deHaan, Ben Myers, Cassey Lottman,
Dan Leatherman,
Evan Sheehan,
Thomas M. Semmler,
Sia Karamalegos,
Stephanie Eckles,
Cory Dransfeldt,
Uncenter,
Bob Monsour,
Raphael Höser, and
Shiv J.M. (and so many others).
…and keep building for the web ❤️
