Using a folder other than posts/ with Eleventy

I just updated this site to use Eleventy.

I don’t update enchilada that much anymore. It’s now more a place to centralize all the little tweaks and gotchas of web work, and less a platform for scaffolding websites.

In all honestly, enchilada was intended more to be more a simple site generator, and less a blogging platform. I never originally intended for my site to be a blog, but it turns out I enjoy writing, and do it a lot!

Eleventy was a natural fit for the next iteration of this site. It’s a static site generator allows me to focus on what I want to, namely writing, semantics, and CSS styling. It’s also got a great community behind it.

Converting this site was straightforward. It took roughly half a day—most of that was adding metadata for posts on other sites. I did run into one little snag, namely using a directory other than posts/ to house my writing.

Fortunately, the wonderful Dave Rupert got me sorted:

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
  // Filter source file names using a glob
  eleventyConfig.addCollection("posts", function(collectionApi) {
    return collectionApi.getFilteredByGlob("writing/*.md");
  });
};

How great is that? You can also target multiple directories, so something like getFilteredByGlob(["writing/*.md", "notes/*.md"]) is totally valid. I might poke around with Netlify CMS and get a TIL section set up.

I’m not a developer. I don’t want to wrestle with overwrought Webpack configuration, write GraphQL queries for basic navigation, or scream at types for failing to transpile or whatever. I want to write.

This is more of the kind of content I want to self-publish: shorter, and more scoped. I still enjoy writing longform (especially about accessibility and inclusive design), but I think that kind of content is best served on other sites where there’s better reach.

Anyhow, this site has a RSS feed, if that’s your thing.