Zach’s ugly mug (his face) Zach Leatherman

I Need Your Help to Make 11ty Fully Independent and Sustainable in 2024

May 21, 2024 #6 Popular

Updated September 11, 2024: As 11ty is now joining Font Awesome, we’re winding down our sustainability fundraising campaign. I’ll post more detail about this soon and I sincerely appreciate everyone that donated!

The 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good wrapped up two short weeks ago and it was (to say the least) incredible. The speakers, the talks, and most importantly — the community.

Piggybacking from this amazing momentum, 11ty is making some bigger moves: we’re going all-in to create a fully independent and sustainable, grass-roots funded open source project in 2024.

Practically speaking this means that for the very first time in 11ty’s history, I will be working independently on 11ty full time. This means increased iteration speed, more responsive official support, more features and bug fixes, and faster releases.

The ethos of 11ty has always been to do more, with less. You see fingerprints from this idea throughout the project: in our build performance, in our HTML-first tooling philosophy, in our ecosystem of small unix-philosophy style composable utilities that work independent of Eleventy (like Image, Fetch, WebC, and is-land).

As a project we’ve seen folks happily migrate to Eleventy — away from tools with much larger budgets and investment — with rave reviews on how little app-team maintenance was required long-term. It has many folks asking the question: what is the total cost of ownership (buzzword alert) of your current tech stack?

Asking for Help

This change also means that 11ty needs your help, financially. This blog post is the first time we’ve ever done a fundraising push for 11ty in the seven years we’ve helped folks build fast and stable web sites on the Jamstack and I wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t absolutely necessary.

If you are already a supporter on our Open Collective — thank you. You have made this move possible. With the money we’ve saved through our Open Collective, we’ve unlocked a runway for this sustainability push, but we need more businesses and companies to be involved to survive long-term.

If you use 11ty at work, now is the time to get your company involved. To reinforce the stability of 11ty moving forward, we need more recurring (monthly/yearly) contributions. Individual sponsorships are also welcome — every bit helps.

At time of writing, we had approximately $2200 in monthly recurring contributions. Our fundraising goal is $6000 (monthly).

11ty Logo

The above chart updates daily with live data and we are currently 74.8% to the goal: $4485.69 of $6000 USD.

If you have questions or want to have a discussion about this (very big) news, please email me directly. Let’s work together!

Partnerships

We’re also looking for corporate partners in the following spaces for more creative partnerships moving forward:

  • Developer Tools
  • Web Hosting (Jamstack, Static Sites, et al)
  • Image Optimization (we’re about to ship a best-in-class Image Optimization plugin that would pair quite nicely with a hosted service)
  • Content Management Systems
  • Web Performance and Monitoring

Is this you? Contact me directly.

Here are a few examples of some lovely organizations using 11ty:

  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.nasa.gov/NASA
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://home.web.cern.ch/Cern
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://tc39.es/TC39
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.w3.org/W3C
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://about.google/Google
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.mozilla.org/Mozilla
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.jetbrains.com/JetBrains
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://web.dev/web.dev
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://web.mit.edu/MIT
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.stanford.edu/Stanford
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://v8.dev/V8
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://gsap.com/GSAP
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://developer.chrome.com/Chrome Developers
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://foursquare.com/Foursquare
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.webpagetest.org/WebPageTest
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.a11yproject.com/A11Y Project
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.gov.uk/United Kingdom (gov)
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/France (gov)
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://stackoverflow.com/Stack Overflow
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://lit.dev/Lit
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://glitch.com/Glitch
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://stackblitz.com/Stackblitz
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://openwebdocs.org/Open Web Docs
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.greenpeace.org/Greenpeace
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.csis.org/CSIS
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://eslint.org/ESLint
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://mochajs.org/Mocha
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://revealjs.com/reveal.js
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://panic.com/Panic
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://set.studio/Set Studio
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.ookla.com/Ookla
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.kandji.io/Kandji
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.khanacademy.org/Khan Academy
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://basecamp.com/Basecamp
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.snowpack.dev/Snowpack
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://ffconf.org/ffconf
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://2022.uxlondon.com/UX London
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://nordhealth.com/Nordhealth
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.orange.com/Orange
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.wisc.edu/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.ca.gov/California (gov)
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://ux.redhat.comRed Hat
  • IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.pie.design/Just Eat Takeaway

Please get in touch!


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The Future of 11ty (2024)

Zach Leatherman IndieWeb Avatar for https://zachleat.com/is a builder for the web at IndieWeb Avatar for https://fontawesome.com/Font Awesome and the creator/maintainer of IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.11ty.devEleventy (11ty), an award-winning open source site generator. At one point he became entirely too fixated on web fonts. He has given 83 talks in nine different countries at events like Beyond Tellerrand, Smashing Conference, Jamstack Conf, CSSConf, and The White House. Formerly part of CloudCannon, Netlify, Filament Group, NEJS CONF, and NebraskaJS. Learn more about Zach »

176 Reposts

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Marty McGuirePirijanJustin PinkneyTyler StickaPassimAaron MoodieRobin HooverJay CuthrellAndrew ChouSofie HiltGerard HynesDave ???? :cursor_pointer:Michelle BarkerMahmoud AshrafJuan FernandesDmitry Sharabin*Max BöckIndra Kupferschmid ????????ErikaMatthias WaglerGeorge FrancisEgor Kloos_PearMatt PayneHappyStarDiaz???????????????????????????????? ???? ????️‍???? :verified_gay:motionsuggestsJonColinautAndrew SutherlandAdrianna TanMoritz RebbertJim WinsteadAlesandro Ortiz ????????????️‍????Jeff SikesDimitris GrammatikogiannisDave RupertStuart LangridgeRyan PaulKonnor RogersJoshua Byrd ????Chris ColemanairbrStefan BaumgartnerTommi ????Saneef H. AnsariNicolas HoizeyBressainFernando Mateusmatthewcultured nyc ????????Katie Sylor-MillerjailandradeNelson Chu PavloskyFynn BeckerPelle WessmanKarin!Chris BurnellHawk TicehurstKristin (vis.social Admin)fabian wohlgemuthhenry ✷Nathan Knowler010011000101010101011000Mike Apariciocthos ????Boris SchapiraAshur CabreraMike NeumegenOpen {re}SourcenazStephanie EcklesBryce WrayAdrian Lorenzana :logo:Eric PortisJBiainrDon McCurdyCloudCannonRiver BrandonChristian AlderDoctor PopularnateApple Annie :prami:Stephen BellJuhisKeenanbkardellSimon Cox :SEO:Cory :prami_pride_demi:jenn schifferJeffersonBledsoeBenoît LaunayScott Kellum :typetura:Eleventy ???? v3.0.0-alpha.10
34 Comments
  1. jenn schiffer

    @zachleat @eleventy this is great to see! check out our fast forward program if any fastly services could help with this effort - https://www.fastly.com/fast-forward/. you know how to reach me if you’ve got questions Fast Forward - how we're building the open internet

  2. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @jenn @eleventy ooh — I’ll check it out! (and thank you!)

  3. Bryce Wray

    @zachleat But still with CloudCannon, correct? The “working independently on 11ty full time” reference raised my eyebrows slightly. ????

  4. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @BryceWrayTX no longer with CloudCannon, unfortunately. Nothing but love for all those folks though.

  5. Bryce Wray

    @zachleat ???? Yep, know what you mean. Did some work for them briefly but it came to an end. Same good feelings for the whole bunch.

  6. Kevin Pennekamp

    I've just contributed to Eleventy. Consider supporting them too — every little helps! https://opencollective.com/11ty @eleventy Eleventy - Open Collective

  7. cthos ????

    @zachleat Am I reading this correctly that you're leaving Cloud Cannon to become fully independent?

  8. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @cthos I am no longer working at CloudCannon, yes. 11ty is now my full time job.

  9. cthos ????

    @zachleat Wooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

  10. uncenter

    @zachleat @eleventy have you considered allowing the core team to expand beyond just you? it's been sad to see the project stagnate and i think having more frequent committers would help!

  11. henry ✷

    @zachleat I contribute monthly to @eleventy — Eleventy's active development makes both my work life and the health of the web better in a material way. I hope y'all consider contributing as well :) opencollective.com/11ty

  12. Rik Schennink

    @zachleat @eleventy will definitely keep sponsoring ????

  13. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @rikschennink @eleventy Appreciate you Rik!!

  14. Christian Alder

    @zachleat @eleventy I have some catching up to do for sure; starting now and hope to always keep a contribution connection going forward. ???? I wish you all the best in going full time with this, it’s an amazing project that brought the joy of web dev back for me.

  15. Eleventy ???? v3.0.0-alpha.10

    @christian @zachleat appreciate you Christian!!

  16. @zachleat @eleventy oh wow, now that's done news! Will figure out what I can do to support the project asap.

  17. Eleventy ???? v3.0.0-alpha.10

    @ttntm @zachleat thank you Tom!!

  18. matthew

    Congratulations!

  19. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    y’all are incredible — thank you so much for boosting and sharing this. @eleventy

  20. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @matthew thank you!

  21. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @henry @eleventy thank you Henry!! ????

  22. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @uncenter @eleventy I think we have different definitions of “stagnate”

  23. Katie Sylor-Miller

    @zachleat @eleventy I just doubled my monthly contribution from $11 to $22! Onward to the future, Zach!

  24. uncenter

    @zachleat @eleventy stagnate as in 481 open issues and multiple unmaintained "official" plugins?

  25. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @ksylor @eleventy thank you Katie!! ????????????????

  26. Adrianna Tan

    @ksylor @zachleat @eleventy 2(11ty)

  27. Jerod Santo

    @zachleat let’s get you back on @jsparty to help spread the word on this

  28. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @jerod @jsparty awesome. Sign me up

  29. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @anarodrigues @eleventy Thank you Ana!! ????

  30. Zach Leatherman :11ty:

    @michelle @eleventy Thank you Michelle!

  31. Eleventy ???? v3.0.0-alpha.10

    @mikka thank you Mikka!

  32. Eleventy ???? v3.0.0-alpha.10

    @mxbck Thank you Max! This means a lot! ????

  33. Eugenio Monforte

    @mxbck I still love Astro for build static websites, but I'm more and more attracted to the vision behind Eleventy

  34. Pirijan

    @zachleat @Colman that’s really great thx!

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