This site is built with a tool called Eleventy

“Eleventy” is an old jokey word for a large, vague number. Tolkien made it famous: Bilbo Baggins celebrates his eleventy-first birthday, 111, at the start of The Lord of the Rings.

In 2017 a web developer, Zach Leatherman, named his static-site generator after a story from his own childhood. When he was three or four, counting for his grandmother, he went from ten straight to “leventy teen”. Told that nobody says that, he answered: “But I do. I do say ‘leventy teen.’” Years later he found her handwritten note about it. The tool is written 11ty, and it is what turned the text files behind this website into the pages you are reading. In 2026 it was renamed Build Awesome, but the version that builds this site still says Eleventy on the box.

When the time came to choose a tool for a site about eleven, there was not really a choice.