11tyCMS Beta 2: New logo, major bug fixes, improved UX/UI and more!

posted on Mar 9, 2026

Welcome back! It's been yet another busy month for 11tyCMS's development. This update focuses on improving the UI/UX to meet our exceptional UX goals. We've also fixed lots of major bugs and points of friction, and improved the writing experience.

Since January, we've closed over 23 Codeberg issues. With so much more to come. Let's dive in!

Where can I download it?

As usual, builds can be found on our GitHub repository.

What does 11ty's acquisition mean for 11tyCMS?

For those unaware: 11ty is being acquired by Font Awesome, and is becoming Build Awesome. I want to congratulate Zach on finding a new home to secure 11ty's future as it grows into Build Awesome.

In light of this transition: 11tyCMS development will not stop. However, rebranding will be needed. The roadmap will also change slightly, likely to add support for other SSGs after rebranding. However, this won't become clear until Build Awesome's first public beta in May.

Ultimately, Build Awesome will not replace 11tyCMS. 11tyCMS is trailblazing a new path: a path for local first, offline friendly, truly serverless CMSs. Build Awesome poses no threat to this.

New home for the source code

As outlined in the previous post, I chose to go with Codeberg over GitHub for ethical reasons. As a project that believes in the power of the indie web, I wanted to also host our code in a way that reflects this project's values and goals. Unfortunately, I've decided to move the source back to GitHub for the time being for the following reasons:

  • Codeberg doesn't support build uploads larger than 100mb (11tyCMS is 120mb)

  • The uptime of Codeberg and Codeberg Pages (no fault of theirs, they're running a free and open code hosting platform!)

  • Lack of sponsorship/funding integration

Moving back to GitHub isn't something I take lightly. But as a young project that needs exposure, funding and a platform that makes it as easy for people to interact and download as possible... I feel this choice is in 11tyCMS's best interest.

However, this decision will be under frequent review and once it's a more established project, I will look to move back to Codeberg.

The link for the repo can now be found under the 11tyCMS GitHub organization.

New interim logo!

I wanted a logo that better represents the visual identity of 11tyCMS: one that's accessible with an easy to read font. Introducing our new logo:

The 11tyCMS logo

I'm really happy with the result, though I think it needs more color contrast, especially with 11tyCMS's default color scheme. It blends into darker backgrounds too much. For now, it'll do until we figure out the rebrand after Build Awesome's release.

Funding and donations

To keep 11tyCMS's future long and bright, I'm setting up funding/donation avenues. I have setup a Ko-Fi account for now, so if anyone would like to support 11tyCMS, I'd really appreciate any donations you have to give! I'm also considering:

  • Patreon

  • Open Collective

GitHub Sponsors is also enabled on the repo if you'd prefer!

Any feedback on these choices would be most welcome. Right now, the biggest immediate expense is affording the developer keys for Mac and Windows builds, and to renew them every year. If enough funding is secured, maybe even paying some UX/UI specialists to get some feedback on design and UX!

Our own fork of eleventy-base-blog

We now have a bespoke fork of eleventy-base-blog specifically for 11tyCMS. It's designed to work OOB for 11tyCMS with only a few changes:

  • A media folder added to the content folder

  • Removal of nested collections

Instructions on using this fork are found in the readme in the repo. Check it out!

New metadata type!

Among other metadata updates, I've added a new type: string arrays! If you have tags in your posts' frontmatter? You can now add and remove new ones. There are many exciting use cases for this data type, and I can't wait to see people use it!

Screenshot of 11tyCMS's editor, with the string array type active, showing a text box with "tags" in it.

Improved UI/UX

My biggest goal for 11tyCMS is to have a beautiful user experience, one that feels polished and seamless for our users. I want to develop the CMS that the users of 11ty/Build Awesome deserve. The first beta release fell a little short on this.

With this in mind, I set out a plan for a "war on jank". My biggest goal with this update was to make every feature and UI/UX element as flawless as possible. Here's just a few of the things I did over the last month:

Sidebar improvements

Before, the sidebar always stayed static. If you split 11tyCMS to half your screen? The sidebar would take up valuable horizontal space. Well, no longer! There's now a button between the sidebar and the editor area which allows you to activate: "hover to reveal" mode. This allows you to read your notes as you write, dramatically improving the writing experience.

Selected collections now show a white outline on the folder icon, making it much clearer which collection you're currently in.

Improved add file dialog UX

In the previous release, the add file dialog was a text box and an "add" button. The text box would parse what you typed, and would strip out anything that wasnt a number or letter, while replacing spaces with dashes. However, this wasn't clear or stated. Now, we've got a label beneath showing a preview of what your final link might look like:

Screenshot of the 11tyCMS add file dialog. There's a text box with the text: "Hello world this is my post", with a label beneath it that hyphenates the text in the text box.

Improved metadata UX

The input fields of old were bright white! Very overwhelming for the dark mode aesthetic that 11tyCMS boasts. I've redesigned all inputs to follow the design language of 11tyCMS, which makes things look much less busy and easier on the eye.

Collection 11tydata files now support a new key: eleventyCMSMetadata, which provides a basic outline for the default metadata in your collection. So if you want all new posts in the "blogs" collection to have a "tags" key with a string array, all you have to do is define the key, followed by an empty array. Bam! Each new post you create will have an empty string array by default. For example:

eleventyCMSMetadata:{
	shortDescription:"",
	image:'',
	imageAlt:'',
	languages:[],
	technologies:[],
    url:''
},

Will give you the shortDescription, image, imageAlt, url string fields, and the languages, technologies will give you the string array fields.

The input fields have received some much needed love too: all text inputs have been converted into textareas. These take up the available width, and can be vertically expanded. This makes inputting long pieces of text into your frontmatter a much more pleasant experience:

A screenshot of the metadata editor, with a textbox that can be enlarged vertically.

The metadata field now has a maximum height. Before, they could vertically spill into other fields, making their values illegible. Now, there's a maximum height and a scroll bar to prevent this.

Added spell check!

A frequent annoyance of earlier builds was the lack of spell check. No longer! Now, when you right click the red squiggly lines? You finally get spell check suggestions.

Major bug fixes

Image protocol fixes

In the previous release, exiting the editor after writing and re-entering it would break images. They'd fail to load and you'd have to restart the app to fix it. This was a bug in the custom eleventy media protocol I developed. I've since resolved this, and the protocol works flawlessly!

Site dashboard fix

In release 1, after initiating a new site, going to the dashboard page would give you a blank page. This was a major onboarding problem: it prevented new users from customizing their settings after setup.

The fix was trivial and the dashboard now works perfectly.

Fixed site icons/favicons not working

Before, only .svg favicons would work. If your site had no favicon or a favicon of a format other than .svg, it wouldn't load.

The issue was down to lack of parsing for other favicon formats, which has since been resolved. It now supports a whole range of formats: svg, png, gif, the lot!

Default favicon

For sites without favicon, we now have a default "globe" icon.

Metadata accessibility fixes

Previously, the metadata table was not keyboard navigable. I have since refactored the metadata table to allow keyboard access, hopefully creating a better experience for our disabled users!

Added support for more eleventy config files

Before, 11tyCMS would only support 11ty sites with config files named: eleventy.config.js. But I've recently learned there's 3 other file names 11ty accepts, so I've added support for those as well.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm very proud of how this update turned out. The UI/UX improvements are huge, everything feels so polished and nice to use. But there's still loads more to be done. The next update, though, will be based around 11tyCMS's website, Linux packaging, refactoring to TypeScript and funding.

Over the coming weeks, I'll start on completely overhauling this website to match the visual identity of 11tyCMS.

In the meantime, though: thanks for reading and for all the support thus far. I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to give feedback and report problems. Keep going, let's build the CMS that 11ty users deserve together!

Over and out <3