Expert Eleventy Theme Setup and Customization Services
You chose Eleventy (Static site generator - Wikipedia) for its speed and flexibility — and immediately ran into a problem: there are almost no ready-made themes. Unlike Hugo or Jekyll, starters are full-blown projects that are copied entirely. You need to dissect them, understand the logic, and adapt to your tasks. And if your project goes beyond a blog, customization requires manual reworking of templates, data, and styles.
We take on all this work: configure the settings, change layouts, add missing components, and polish the theme to a production-ready state. With 5+ years of experience and 30 completed Eleventy projects, we guarantee a stable and maintainable result. Get a free consultation to discuss your project.
Problems Clients Come With
-
Hydration mismatch and phantom errors: when migrating content from WordPress to Eleventy, data often contains extra whitespace or invalid HTML. We process it through filters and custom parsers.
-
Complex navigation and multi-page structures: custom taxonomies, pagination, sorting — in Eleventy this is done via collections, but configuring them requires understanding its data flow. We design a system where any page builds in seconds.
-
Design system and dark theme: ready-made starters rarely include CSS variables and a theme switcher. We add isolated styles, animations, and responsive layout from scratch.
How We Customize Eleventy: A Real Case
A client — a SaaS product with 50+ documentation pages. The initial starter eleventy-base-blog didn’t support a sidebar menu, multi-level navigation, or full-text search. We:
- Designed a new collection architecture: pages were split into modules, each with its own meta information.
- Added a custom search plugin based on
elasticlunr — the index is generated at build time, search works without external services.
- Wrote Nunjucks components: header with dropdown menu, article cards, breadcrumbs, pagination.
- Integrated Tailwind CSS via a custom config — overrode the palette to match the client’s brand.
- Set up RSS, sitemap, and metadata for SEO.
Result: build time dropped from 12 to 3 seconds (4x faster), Core Web Vitals (LCP < 1.5 s) are in the green zone. Cost savings on maintenance — up to 40% ($1,200/year saved on hosting).
Why Order Eleventy Customization from Us?
We don’t just change colors and fonts. We dive into business logic: how content will be created, how users will navigate, how the site should behave on mobile. Eleventy is powerful, but its configuration requires deep knowledge — we’ve already done it across 30 projects.
Comparison: Self-study setup takes 5–14 days, while our team handles a basic version in 2–4 days. Plus, we offer a 1-year warranty — if something breaks after a template update, we fix it for free. Automation saves additional time — up to 30% of the total budget.
| Parameter |
Self-learning |
With us |
| Initial setup time |
5–14 days |
2–4 days |
| Time for revisions |
3–10 days |
1–3 days |
| Risk of errors on update |
High |
Minimal (warranty) |
| Change documentation |
None |
Full documentation |
How to Customize Eleventy Templates?
The principle is the same as in Hugo: find the required template in the _includes folder and edit it directly. The starter is a copy, not a package, so changes aren’t lost on updates. Typical customization points:
-
eleventy.config.js — adding filters, collections, passthrough copies.
-
src/_data/metadata.json — changing the name, description, author.
-
src/_includes/layouts/base.njk — HTML structure, meta tags, scripts.
We always document all changes in the project documentation so you can quickly make adjustments later. Get a consultation — we’ll show you how it works on your project.
What’s Included in Eleventy Customization
- Analysis of the starter and your requirements, selection of the optimal template.
- Configuration of
metadata.json, navigation.json, and general settings.
- Layout changes (base, post, page) — adding navigation, footer, sidebars.
- Style customization: CSS variables, Tailwind, dark theme.
- Creation of custom components (cards, lists, forms).
- SEO enhancement: meta tags, Open Graph, sitemap, RSS.
- Testing on mobile devices and different browsers.
- Deployment to hosting (Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages).
- Documentation on project structure and future maintenance.
- Training session for your team (up to 2 hours).
- Admin access to all accounts and repositories.
- 1-year support warranty on custom code.
Timeline
| Scope of work |
Duration |
| Initial starter setup (metadata, navigation, colors, fonts) |
1–2 days |
| Deep template customization, adding components, custom pages |
3–6 days |
| Comprehensive customization with design, search, multilingual support |
7–14 days |
Pricing is calculated individually — starting from $500 for basic setup. We’re ready to evaluate your project for free and provide a transparent estimate. Contact us to get a preliminary quote.
Choosing a Site Type is a Technical Task, Not Marketing
We see teams waste budget on the wrong stack. A landing page on Next.js with static generation and a corporate site with CMS are fundamentally different infrastructures, even if they look similar. A mistake at the start leads to 5–10x higher hosting costs and slow loading speeds. Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, TTFB) have different priorities for each site type. Below we break down four types of websites, their typical technical mistakes, and how we fix them.
How to Avoid Mistakes When Choosing a CMS?
Business Card Website
The most compact format: 1–5 pages, minimal dynamics. The main goal is to provide contact information and make a first impression. Technically not complex, but there are traps.
Stack too heavy. WordPress with 15 plugins for 5 pages gives 800ms TTFB on shared hosting. We propose static: HTML/CSS/JS or Next.js with output: 'export', deployed on Vercel or Cloudflare Pages. No PHP, no database — only CDN. TTFB < 50ms guaranteed. Hosting savings up to 50,000 ₽ per year.
No contact form with backend validation. A form with only JS validation is decoration. The backend must validate, rate-limit, and send notifications. For static sites we use Formspree or a serverless endpoint.
Missing Schema.org markup. Google Knowledge Panel relies on LocalBusiness or Organization markup — address, phone, hours. For a business card site this is critical. We embed it in the template.
Development time: 2–3 weeks with design. Order a turnkey development — we will evaluate your project in one day.
Why Does Landing Page Speed Directly Affect Conversion?
Landing Page
A landing page has one goal: conversion. Everything not leading to the target action is unnecessary. Core Web Vitals are critical here because of paid traffic, and Google uses CWV as a factor in Quality Score.
A specific case: a landing page with an 8MB hero video autoplay in MP4 without preload="none" + three third-party analytics scripts synchronously in <head>. LCP 9.4s, INP 780ms. We replaced the video with a poster image loaded lazily on scroll, moved scripts to async/defer and partially to Web Workers via Partytown. LCP 1.8s, INP 140ms. Conversion increased by 23% — solely due to speed, not design.
A/B testing is standard practice. Google Optimize shut down, but there are Growthbook (open source), PostHog, VWO. For Next.js we use edge middleware to distribute traffic at the CDN level without extra JS.
Timeline: 2–4 weeks. Contact us for a consultation — we will estimate timeline and budget in one day.
Corporate Website
A corporate site means CMS, multiple sections, multilingual support, CRM integration. The key question: who will edit the content and how often.
If editors are non-technical, a visual editor is needed. WordPress with Gutenberg or ACF Pro covers this. For complex structures — headless CMS (Strapi, Directus) with a frontend on Next.js. If the site updates infrequently — Markdown in Git with Astro or Next.js. Deploy on push to main — no CMS.
Performance. An "About Us" page with 40 original photos — LCP 12 seconds on mobile. Next.js <Image> component with WebP and srcset solves it without manual work.
Multilingual: Astrotomic Translatable on Laravel or next-intl / react-i18next. URL structure — /ru/about, /en/about with hreflang.
Timeline: 6–12 weeks depending on scope.
Promo Site
A promo site is temporary or permanent for a campaign. Non-standard design, animations, interactivity. Stack: GSAP, Framer Motion, Three.js, Lottie, Canvas API.
The main pitfall — animations that lag on mobile. GPU animations via transform and opacity are fine. box-shadow in animation, filter: blur() on every frame, animating width/height — causes 20fps on iPhone 12. will-change: transform helps pointwise.
Prefers-reduced-motion is mandatory for accessibility. We always add it.
Timeline: 3–6 weeks depending on complexity.
Comparison Table
| Parameter |
Business Card |
Corporate |
Landing Page |
Promo |
| Pages |
1–5 |
10–50+ |
1–3 |
1–10 |
| CMS |
Not needed |
Needed |
Not needed |
Rarely |
| SEO priority |
Medium |
High |
High |
Low |
| Animations |
Minimal |
Moderate |
Moderate |
Intensive |
| Timeline (with design) |
2–3 weeks |
6–12 weeks |
2–4 weeks |
3–6 weeks |
Cost is calculated individually after studying the technical specification. Google recommends TTFB under 0.8s, ours is <0.2s.
What Does Our Work Include?
- Analytics and prototyping (structure, user scenarios)
- Design concept (responsive, mobile-first)
- Layout with LCP, CLS, INP optimization
- CMS selection and setup (if needed)
- Integration with CRM/marketing tools
- Testing (cross-browser, load testing)
- Documentation and access transfer
- Editor training (video + written)
- 3-month warranty (free fixes)
Our Expertise
We have been on the market for 10+ years, completed 200+ projects — from simple business cards to high-traffic landing pages with millions of audience. Every project undergoes Core Web Vitals audit before release.
Second Table: Approach Comparison
| Approach |
TTFB (ms) |
Maintenance Complexity |
Cost |
| Static HTML/CSS |
<50 |
Low |
from 50,000 ₽ |
| Next.js + headless CMS |
<200 |
Medium |
from 150,000 ₽ |
| WordPress + plugins |
500–1500 |
High |
from 300,000 ₽ |
Image optimization: we automatically convert to WebP/AVIF, generate srcset for all resolutions, use lazy loading with Intersection Observer. For background images — progressive loading technique. This alone cuts page weight by 60–80%.
Contact us for a consultation on your project. Order turnkey development — we will estimate timeline and budget in one day.
