Deployment

Now that you’ve built a web site with Eleventy (even if it’s one HTML page!) you might be ready to put it on the web for everyone to see! There are a bunch of different ways to do it!

A standard Eleventy build (e.g. running npx @11ty/eleventy) is a production-ready build by default. Eleventy doesn’t change its build behavior internally for development versus production.

If you want to customize Eleventy to do your own local development/production optimizations, environment variables are a common solution to accomplish that goal.

Providers

Take a look at the list below for some ideas on where to deploy your Eleventy project. There are many deployment options available and this is not meant to be an exhaustive list.

Jamstack Providers

Jamstack providers can trigger your Eleventy build command automatically when you commit a file to your source control repository (GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, etc.) and deploy Eleventy’s build output directory for you.

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Recommended Partner

GitLab Pages

Kinsta

Render

Sourcehut Pages

Codeberg Pages

Netlify

Azure Static Web Apps

Digital Ocean

Stormkit

Edgio

Cloudflare Pages

CloudCannon

Vercel

GitHub Pages

Use an npm Script

One common practice when deploying Eleventy via a Jamstack provider is to use an npm script to run your build command. This is configured in your package.json file and could look like this:

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "npx @11ty/eleventy"
  }
}

This allows you to configure your host to run npm run build and allows you to make future changes to that command in your code and not the host’s configuration.

Classic Web Hosts

Eleventy can work with any web host that supports static files!

With these hosts deployment is not automatically triggered for you, so after you run the Eleventy build command you’ll need to upload your Eleventy output directory (defaults to _site) to the host manually.

This is a great place to start if you’re not familiar with source control (e.g. git or GitHub).

NearlyFreeSpeech

yay.boo

Cloudflare Direct Upload

xmit

Neocities

Netlify Drop

Vercel CLI

Edit on the Web

There are some great Web editors popping up that you can use to run and edit Eleventy projects online! Here are some options:

Glitch

Stackblitz

Persisting Cache

The .cache folder is used by the Eleventy Fetch plugin (and Eleventy Image) to avoid repeating costly network requests. On your hosting provider’s build server, this folder will typically be empty when you start a build, because you definitely are not checking in your .cache folder to git (right?).

Some Jamstack providers have additional features to persist this folder between builds, re-useing the cache and speeding up build times. Here are a few of these:

• CloudCannon: use Preserved paths. Tutorial on YouTube.
• Vercel: zero-configuration support (when the Eleventy framework is detected, source).
• Cloudflare Pages: now preserves the .cache folder by default! (shipped April 2024)
• GitHub Pages: use the cache action. Mini-tutorial included below.
• Netlify: use netlify-plugin-cache. Mini-tutorial included below. Video on YouTube.

Speed up Eleventy Image

Additionally, if you’re writing your Eleventy Image output to your Eleventy output directory (e.g. ./_site/img/) (and not checking those files into git), you can persist this folder as well to reuse the Eleventy Image disk cache to improve build times.

• CloudCannon Tutorial on YouTube (2023)
• Source example on GitHub for Netlify (2022)

Mini-Tutorials

Deploy an Eleventy project to GitHub pages

Includes persisted cache across builds. Using peaceiris/actions-gh-pages.

1. Go to your repository’s Settings on GitHub.
2. In the GitHub Pages section change:
   • Source: Deploy from a branch
   • Branch: gh-pages/(root)
3. Create a new GitHub workflow file in
   .github/workflows/deploy-to-ghpages.yml

   name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
   
   on:
     push:
       branches:
         - main
     pull_request:
   
   jobs:
     deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
       permissions:
         contents: write
       concurrency:
         group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
       steps:
         - uses: actions/checkout@v3
   
         - name: Setup Node
           uses: actions/setup-node@v3
           with:
             node-version: "18"
   
         - name: Persist npm cache
           uses: actions/cache@v3
           with:
             path: ~/.npm
             key: ${{ runner.os }}-node-${{ hashFiles('**/package.json') }}
   
         - name: Persist Eleventy .cache
           uses: actions/cache@v3
           with:
             path: ./.cache
             key: ${{ runner.os }}-eleventy-fetch-cache
   
         - run: npm install
         - run: npm run build-ghpages
   
         - name: Deploy
           uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3
           if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
           with:
             github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
             publish_dir: ./_site

Using netlify-plugin-cache to persist cache

Using netlify-plugin-cache.

1. npm install netlify-plugin-cache
2. Add the following to your
   netlify.toml configuration file

   [[plugins]]
   package = "netlify-plugin-cache"
   
     [plugins.inputs]
     paths = [ ".cache" ]

Related

From the Community

• GitLab Pages Sample Project by Benson Muite
• GitHub Action for Eleventy by @TartanLlama

×75 resources via 11tybundle.dev curated by Bob Monsour.

• Dynamic pages with 11ty and Cloudflare workers — Cory Dransfeldt (2024)
• Using Coolify for deploying 11ty — Lewis Dale (2024)
• 11ty upgrading node in netlify — Simon Cox (2024)
• Digital Notebook - Project Notes — Sam Feldstein (2024)
• Prairie Rose Arena - Project Notes — Sam Feldstein (2024)

Other pages in Eleventy Projects:

• Add CSS, JS, Fonts
• Layouts
  • Layout Chaining
• Collections
  • Collections API
• Create Pages From Data
• Pagination
  • Pagination Navigation
• Content Dates
• Permalinks
• Virtual Templates
• Internationalization (i18n)
• Programmatic API
• Quick Tips
• Common Pitfalls
• Deployment & Hosting
  • Using a CMS