Eleventy (also known as 11ty) is my choice for building static sites. I use it extensively for example at my main site, Turku ❤️ Frontend website, archipylago.dev and I participate in the community actively. It’s built with Javascript and I like how you can start with nothing but a Markdown file and then expand from there, always having full control while the tool does all the heavy lifting.
If you don’t want to manage your website’s content as Markdown or JSON files, check out what Content Management Systems are available.
Some other popular options are:
Obsidian compatible
You can use Obsidian to write content in Markdown and use any of the above tools to turn them into a website. If you use the backlinks feature in Obsidian however, you need tools that can handle them to build an interconnected site.
Quartz is what I use to build this digital garden right now. If you’re okay with its defaults or the few things that can be configured with a Typescript config file, it’s a good choice. If you are like me who wants more control and you’re not comfortable tinkering with the source code itself, I feel like there might be better options.
I haven’t yet tested Flowershow but I ran into it as I had already started setting up Quartz as my tool. The website talks a lot about Obsidian compatibility and I’d like to give it a go at some point. What makes it less appealing to me is that it’s using React – I don’t think a static content site really needs all the complexity of a client-side framework.
In other garden plots of the world
- The 11ty Bundle is a wonderful, regularly updated collection of community resources for Eleventy.
- Kotisivut Hugolla: Projektin aloitus: a 10-part series on how to build a website with Hugo by Saaste (in Finnish)