Simplifying Content Management With Eleventy.js and Netlify CMS

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Content Management Systems do many different things. They come with several costs, though:

• Complexity. They are often difficult for developers & content creators to learn.
• Performance. To store all types of content, CMSes abstract it deeply. When the site displays your content, it has to re-construct those abstractions. That can take time.
• A literal cost. They can be expensive to purchase.

By replacing a monolithic CMS with a combination of static website generation and a headless CMS, these costs can be virtually eliminated.

Static websites serve simple HTML documents. They don’t rely on abstract data structures or a database connection. They’re fast. This is great for the people visiting your website!

Eleventy.js is a static site generator built on JavaScript. It has opinions, but not a lot of them. Eleventy turns your content, written in Markdown, into a static website. This is great for developers!

Netlify CMS is a headless CMS that integrates directly into your website. It enables users to manage their static website without having to learn Markdown. This is great for content creators!

We’ll look at how these tools, and others, can simplify your content management.