Setting up Netlify CMS with Eleventy
01 Feb 2021
On a recent trip I missed blogging as I did not have this repository setup on my laptop (which was primarily used by my daughter). So, when I got back I decided to setup Netlify CMS so that I could blog from anywhere and with any device.
After a few searches I came across these two article which did the job well.
- Creating a basic blog with Eleventy and Netlify CMS completely from scratch
- Building A Blog With Eleventy And Netlify CMS – Part 3: Managing Blog Content With Netlify CMS
I didn't get the setup 100% correct so I decided to dig in and see what the problem was. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when setting up Netlify CMS with your Eleventy blog after you refer to the articles above.
This is extremely important! Make the Identity registration Invite only. Suprisingly the above two posts don't talk about this. You don't want anyone to sign up and start posting on your blog!
Once you invite yourself, the Netlify invite link you get in your email needs to be edited so that you can confirm your email address. See johngage's comment here (you need to copy the link and edit the mandrill url).
The images/uploads folder needs to be on the root of your Eleventy blog. Then add the passthrough in the Eleventy.js file (see below).
Add the following 2 passthrough's in your Eleventy.js file. This will tell the build process to create these folders under _site:
eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy("admin");
eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy("images");
Change the config.yml to suit your blog post template and filename format.
That's it. You are now ready to use Netlify CMS's power to publish your posts from anywhere.