How to make it user-friendly?

StarfallProjects / eleventy-docs-starters

A collection of Eleventy starters for creating documentation sites.

MIT License

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How to make it user-friendly? #3

Open StarfallProjects opened 3 years ago

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

Consider:

Config files where users can supply info (from site name to color choices to . . . )
Extensability . . .
Ideally, each theme in a directory. User can clone the repo, install dependencies, and then in the config file, select which theme to use. Simply ignore the rest. This would require a way to store layout and style assets in a directory, and point 11ty to that directory when it's looking for them.

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

Consider an npm package with theme choices

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

Ok, I think I've actually cracked this.

One site. Everything in it. A config.js where the user sets the main layout. This cascades out to pull in the correct layouts, CSS etc.

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

How to include extra_js and extra_css?

zapscribbles commented 3 years ago

Really love this concept and thought there could be some application here - plus some very cool design ideas! https://stylestage.dev/

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/issues/380

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

Rethinking this: it feels like I'm fighting the tool, and it's resulting in a very messy /src and lots of ways users can shoot themselves in the foot. Short of Eleventy introducing a theming system, I think I have to accept that these will be skeletons rather than themes (this does also remove any pressure to maintain lol)

StarfallProjects commented 3 years ago

How cool is this! https://theme-builder.netlify.app/ https://css-tricks.com/theming-and-theme-switching-with-react-and-styled-components/

Ok so what-if:

Really awesome base skeleton
Carefully construct layouts that are deliberately flexible
Create a theme builder to users can customize from there (-> it writes to a config file so they can modify it again, or just modify direct in config if they wish)
In the theme builder, include a "deploy to Netlify" button . . .
And include a CMS?

And . . . boom . . .

However I think if I wanted to go this full service, I might want to look at Astro rather than Eleventy maybe . . .