The Blog

2019 seemed to be the year that the term JAMstack started to really grow in popularity with more web developers than ever before. It is approach that I have believed in for many years. Netlify (where I work) was created to enable exactly this type of architecture and indeed coined the very term.

But JAMstack can sound confusing. There are a number of emerging interpretations. In my opinion, there is one aspect of JAMstack which absolutely key: Pre-rendering.

Here is a short explanation about why.

I often find myself making sites as side projects. My starting point for these tends to evolve and, of course, depends on the requirements of the project, but I have a very common basic set of needs and tools that I like to use. Lately, I've been learning and enjoying using Tailwind CSS for utility-first CSS. Combining that with Eleventy, which I often use as a static site generator, is fun and productive, so I've made a simple project bootstrap and shared it as a project template on GitHub.

All I need now is a silly pun or portmanteau for a name and... wait... behold! ElevenTail is born!

Since I've emceed a few conferences now, I've been asked a quite few times if I have any tips. I do! Here is a selection of things that I think work for me, wrapped up in a post on CSS-Tricks.