We’re big fans of Eleventy here at CloudCannon — so much so that we switched CloudCannon.com over to Eleventy at the start of this year. With faster build times for our editors and a much smoother workflow for our developers — not to mention the performance gains across the site — we knew it was the right choice.

So we’re particularly excited to announce that CloudCannon and Eleventy have made it official: CloudCannon is now the official CMS Partner for Eleventy, and Eleventy creator Zach Leatherman will be joining the CloudCannon team as our new Developer Advocate!

And more good news for everyone: with our support, Zach will continue to work on Eleventy alongside his role at CloudCannon.

Here's Zach sharing the news:

Our visions for the web Direct link to this section

We talk a lot about the ‘lean web’ at CloudCannon. (And we’ll talk a lot more about it in the future, I’m sure!) Eleventy’s approach to the web dovetails incredibly well with ours because we share the same core goals: to improve the tools we use to make websites, to make them more accessible, more open, and more intuitive to all users.

Why CloudCannon devs love Eleventy Direct link to this section

Our developers are really looking forward to the chance to work with Zach as he continues development on Eleventy. We spoke with several devs when we first switched our stack, and their experiences with using Eleventy on CloudCannon were uniformly positive:

Welcome, Zach! Direct link to this section

Of course, we’re also really looking forward to working with Zach. Zach’s credentials as a developer are apparent to everyone in the modern web development community, and we know he’ll be a fantastic advocate and educator for CloudCannon users alongside his continuing stewardship of the Eleventy community.

Eleventy’s future Direct link to this section

Zach has gone into more detail about Eleventy’s roadmap, but it’s worth stating it here as well: active development on Eleventy will continue, and Eleventy will remain completely independent, led by Zach and the 11ty community. It’s an ideal outcome for everyone involved, and we’re delighted that we can help Eleventy continue as an independent open-source SSG.

Eleventy 3.0 alpha Direct link to this section

While we’re over here being excited about everything, we’re also really looking forward to Eleventy’s 3.0 alpha release in the coming weeks. We’ll let Zach fill you in on the forthcoming features and changes, but for obvious (lean web) reasons we’re looking forward to what’s coming — which will be largely based on the Eleventy community feedback survey.

Here’s to the future of the (lean) web! Direct link to this section

Our goal is to make editing and building static sites easier for everyone. It’s why we build a Git-based CMS when the market is crowded with vendor-locked API-based solutions, and why we support so many SSGs. (And we’ll continue to do so!) It’s also why our agency and freelance Partners love working with CloudCannon — because we want to make everyone’s jobs easier, no matter which technology they choose.

Helping people succeed comes first at CloudCannon. We’ve invested our time and energy in open-source development of SSG-agnostic tools like Pagefind, Rosey, Reseed, Pagebreak, and Bookshop. For the same reasons, we organize and host HugoConf — because we firmly believe that giving people tools and opportunities to learn, grow, and to share their stories is what the lean web community is all about.

All of which is to say that there’s already an incredible amount of alignment between Eleventy and CloudCannon, and there will be more to come.

The future of the lean web is bright, and we're excited to be part of it!