Is building an Eleventy CMS in Laravel possible?

Originally posted 17 Mar 2024

Real code Personal project Eleventy Work in progress

So a couple of weeks back I rebuilt this website using Eleventy, I'm happy with the outcome but less happy with having to write blog posts through VSCode.

There are a couple of CMS options but I didn't want an online service, I want to maintain ownership of my data so I decided to try and create a bespoke CMS within a weekend of hacking.

This is VERY proof-of-concept and the code quality is pretty shocking but it does what it's meant to - provide a cms for my content and build my static site for me.

Here's what I accomplished over the last 48 hours:

• Installed Laravel 11.
• Created a "site import" using Dropzone.js, so I can drag my src folder containing all my existing content and laravel will loop through all my markdown files and create database entries for each one.
• Created an index page that lists all my collections and the posts inside.
• Create an edit page that opens my post data within a wysiwyg editor (I went for Toast UI, will explain why later).
• Save the updated wysiwyg content in the database.
• Created a custom command that loops through all database entries and outputs a bunch of markdown files within my Eleventy installation.
• Added to the command the ability to run eleventy build.

Overall, it works and proves the idea is possible.

Issues and workarounds

Three big issues with this project.

1. The wysiwyg editor, I knew which one I wanted to use but it just didn't support markdown well enough.

   When you google markdown editors there are plenty who say it works, but I struggled with six different editors before I finally had success with Toast.

   It doesn't look the best but it functions which is key for a proof-of-concept.

2. The location of Eleventy and the ability to commit and push, in order to publish my site with as little manual work as possible.

   Due to my own git setup I cannot do a git push from the command line where I run php artisan, it has to be done manually from elsewhere - this is my own fault.

   I can solve this by either moving my eleventy installation into my Laravel project or sorting out the git configs on my PC (sounds easy but it's anything but).

3. I misunderstood how Eleventy data files worked.

   I was under the assumption I could export all my laravel content through an api route and with eleventy create a data file to generate the site from. Wrong. Eleventy can't do that.

   I then tried creating a posts.json file using laravel and then running eleventy build, now this did work but it didn't allow me the custom functionality that I currently have running with date formattings and layouts.

   So that had to go too.

Whats next?

Most importantly I need to refactor.

The code works but it's not something I'd want anyone to see.

Once things are tidier I can focus on getting things looking better, maybe add some styling.

Finally I can then look at extending the functionality with:

• Image management
• Only regenerate changed files
• Collection creation
• Custom YAML
• Autodeploying to netlify

I don't have a name for my new CMS project yet but it'll need one soon.