Experimenting With Eleventy

One nice thing about switching from WordPress to Eleventy is that I start with a blank slate. By this I don’t mean that I start with nothing, because Eleventy does a lot. What I mean by this is that I can use APIs and other tools with greater ease than if I was experimenting with WordPress.

The Federation example

With WordPress I need to use the activitypub plugin which seems to depend on the Jetpack plugin to function. The result is that I’m jumping through two hoops. With a few lines of JavaScript and a file called share.js, I can use Mastodon’s API via my site, to share a blog post. At this moment I’m sharing a thumbnail and the post but later I will experiment with adding two or three preview sentences. I want people to get a taste before clicking.

The Strava Experiment

This morning I went for a group run, and on Saturday I went on a group ride. Within a few days I can design my blog so that my daily ride/run/walk or other sport displays beneath the day’s blog post. If I share photos, then you will get a contextual understanding of where I was, and what I saw.

I was experimenting with plugins on WordPress but they are not that malleable. You need to use them in a specific way. If I deal with the Suunto, or Strava API directly, then I have more control on how sporting activities are displayed.

The Learning Opportunity

Part of the lure of switching from WordPress to Eleventy is the learning opportunity. It’s an opportunity to extend my understanding of CSS, JavaScript, APIs and more. It is also an opportunity to experiment with a much lighter user experience, both for me as a blogger, but also for users of the site. No massive PHP and react overhead.

With the current workflow I can work from within terminal, only using the web browser to check the result.

And Finally

When I was playing with Eleventy the first time I got stuck. This time I didn’t, thanks to Gemini. Before, I had to RTFM and try to decipher what was happening. When I got an error code I had to google for it, and often it would throw me to forums where I had to read dozens of responses without finding something that I understood.

Now when I get an error code I cut and paste it and I get instant help. It saves time, and lowers the barrier to entry.

Having said this, there are plenty of occasions where Gemini wasted hours of my time. There are times where you get an error and gemini will say “try this” and suggest trying the same thing three or more times. That’s why I eventually gave up with the Eleventy Activitypub plugin. I was tired of making no progress.

A Quick Thought on Agentic AI

With what I have seen, experimenting with Gemini and Activitypub I feel concern for people using Agentic AI. My experiment is to see how far I can get using free AI models, rather than paid ones. If I was paying for Gemini, and I saw the loops that I saw, over the last week or more, I’d be frustrated. With Euria, Le Chat and other AI models I ran out of tokens before they provided me with the end result I was looking for.

Conclusion

Learning about Eleventy, JavaScript and APIs is part of the learning experience, but so is learning to get great answers from Gemini and other AI models, with a minimum amount of wasted time, energy, and prompts.