Zach Leatherman

Am I neglecting my open source projects?

2026-08-10T05:00:00Z

I have a lot of open source projects (of varying sizes and shapes).

At time of writing, I’m currently maintaining ×78 npm packages. Of those, 22 are super lightweight zero-dependency custom elements a.k.a. 🚾 Web Components (love the future compatibility I get with very little maintenance required). In addition, I also have a few active websites and starter/template projects that are open source too.

I usually rotate maintenance on these and needed a way to quickly scan my little ecosystem of packages to know which ones needed love. Thus, a new little dashboard has appeared on my web site that I’m calling:

Is this still being maintained??

The name pays homage to those ~~helpful~~ passive aggressive comments folks sometimes leave on issue trackers (mirroring a fair question that perhaps I should be asking myself).

Each project is given a Neglect score that represents how much love it needs. It factors popularity (via npm downloads and GitHub stars) and need (GitHub issues and pull requests, npm audits), and recency (npm publish and GitHub commit dates). It shows how many production dependencies (including transitive ones) that a project uses. It even has a little sparkline to give a little data visualization to how frequently packages are published.

A broader look

The aggregate statistics there were genuinely surprising to me. 67 million downloads in the last year (though this is heavily influenced by dependencies I maintain in Build Awesome/11ty, which are counted separately).

Over 1.1k published versions, 4.7k closed issues, and 2.2k pull requests merged! (not all by me, of course)

Currently my most neglected package is the Eleventy Vue plugin (which owns 31 of my 42 total npm audits) and I’m actively deciding whether to revive it or retire it 🫣.

All of my 77 other packages only have 11 total npm audit reports! I’m feeling extremely proud of that, which feels related to the work I’ve been doing to lock down publishing workflows and reduce dependencies. Though that number may change over time, I now have an easy centralized place to check it. This report also makes it very obvious the relationship between dependency count and audit reports. Keep reducing those dependencies, y’all!

The other result of monitoring this report is that I have archived a bunch of old projects that I don’t want to track, which has a nice clensing feeling to it.

Back Build Awesome Pro and make it easier to build for the web!

2026-04-29T05:00:00Z

The Build Awesome (11ty) Kickstarter (Final_FINAL_v2) is live! We’re trying to make it easier for anyone to build, publish, and maintain web sites!

Update: the Kickstarter campaign has concluded but late pledging (and late pricing) is still available.

Go directly to the Kickstarter.
Read more on the Blog.

Collaborative Editing as Progressive Enhancement

2026-04-22T05:00:00Z

We’re ramping up again to launch the Build Awesome (11ty) Kickstarter Final_FINAL_v2 on April 28, 2026 and in this post I make the case for a new web site builder can layer itself on top of your existing projects as a progressive enhancement. Infrastructure as progressive enhancement!

Launching April 28.

State of the Browser (2026) It’s 10PM: Do You Know Where Your JavaScript Is?

2026-04-16T05:00:00Z

This talk was given at State of the Browser (2026). Check out the event talk page (which includes a talk transcript, too).

We’ll talk about best practices to either reduce (or increase!) the JavaScript footprint on your web site to a sweet and very practical spot for best results. It’s far more common to have too much JavaScript on your web site, but can you go too far? Is zero JavaScript a worthwhile goal? Let’s talk about it!

Video

Watch on YouTube: State of the Browser (2026) It’s 10PM: Do You Know Where Your JavaScript Is?

AMA about Build Awesome, an Open Town Hall at the 11ty Meetup

2026-03-12T05:00:00Z

Here I field any and all community questions about the Eleventy rebrand to Build Awesome.

Watch on YouTube or below:

Watch on YouTube: AMA about Build Awesome, an Open Town Hall at the 11ty Meetup

Eleventy is now Build Awesome

2026-03-06T06:00:00Z

The Eleventy project is taking up the Awesome banner. To support the project, please sign up to get notified when our Kickstarter campaign launches!

Speaking at: State of the Browser (2026)

2026-02-28T06:00:00Z

This is an event post. Also check out my individual talk page.

Update: As the talk has already been given, you can find the talk content published on my web site.

An Official* Logo for HTML

2026-02-19T06:00:00Z

*Not official.

I was working on my slide deck for the upcoming State of the Browser conference and ran into what I would classify as a recurring issue: HTML needs a logo. There isn’t a broadly accepted official logo for (version-independent) HTML. There is a logo for HTML 5, but that versioned marketing term has long fallen out of regular use (and was introduced 18 years ago).

This is a community solved problem in both the CSS and JavaScript spaces!

CSS: , relevant discussion on CSS-Next.
JS: , relevant discussion on voodootikigod/logo.js.
HTML 5: , more info on w3.org.

I wish the classic orange badge hadn’t included a version number, but alas.

Anyway, I very quickly threw my hat into the ring and immediately recognized a much better option from Sam Stephenson sls.name that I’ll be considering canon moving forward (and hopefully this blog post puts some weight behind it for others too).

Here’s what it looks like rendered in your web browser:

HTML

I love the nod to the classic unvisited link color and the heavy outset border that doubles as angle brackets with the right head tilt.

If you’re interested in the source code, the HTML-only (copy-paste friendly) source code is included below (and also on Codepen):

<a href="https://indieweb.social/@sstephenson/116098428280403793" style="all:initial;cursor:pointer;font-size:2rem;width:4em;height:4em;color:blue;text-decoration:underline;display:flex;align-items:center;justify-content:center;background:#ccc;border:.5em outset #aaa;font-weight:900;">HTML</a>

How Eleventy Survived: Funding, Growth, and Open Source Reality

2026-02-03T06:00:00Z

Eleventy started as a side project. Now it’s a critical infrastructure for thousands of websites.

TL;DR: Open source isn’t broken. But the way we fund it often is. Let’s talk about what actually works.

In this episode, we sit down with Zach Leatherman, creator of Eleventy (11ty), to talk honestly about what happens after open source succeeds. From nap-time coding and nights-and-weekends maintenance to venture capital pressure, burnout risk, and the reality of funding long-lived developer tools, this conversation digs into the cultural and financial tradeoffs behind modern open source.

We cover sustainability, community expectations, funding models that don’t rely on hockey-stick growth, and why “free forever” only works if the people behind the project can stay whole humans.

Listen in: How Eleventy Survived: Funding, Growth, and Open Source Reality

Also on:

Eleventy, 2025 in Review

2026-01-12T06:00:00Z

A look back at the 2025 highlights for the 11ty org and the Eleventy project!

It was another huge year for 11ty. We shipped 177 releases (73% more than 2024) across the full 11ty/* suite. We closed 804 issues (15% more than 2024). We reduced core’s dependency count by 28% and weight by 22%. More folks are building with Eleventy than ever: our year-over-year npm downloads (for only core) are up by 51%!