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Eleventy: Build vs. Serverless vs. Edge

Watch in 21 minutes April 21, 2022

Via: https://11tymeetup.dev/events/ep-8-state-of-the-possumverse-and-panel-on-transitioning-to-11ty/

Screenshot image for https://11tymeetup.dev/events/ep-8-state-of-the-possumverse-and-panel-on-transitioning-to-11ty/

This was a talk given at the Eleventy Meetup (11tymeetup.dev). While it was originally titled a “State of 11ty” talk, it somehow got laser-focused on differentiating between the Eleventy rendering modes: Build, Serverless, and Edge.

Watch on YouTube: Eleventy: Build vs. Serverless vs. Edge

Watch on YouTube. Video courtesy of the Eleventy Meetup YouTube channel.

Slides

The State of 11ty, 2022 Edition (with the latest possum balloon mascot floating)

Terrible cursed images of Zach wearing a patagonia vest, and Zach’s head on the classic Stonks image with an arrow going up and to the right

2017 Build, 2021 Serverless, 2022 Edge

A large “Build” text on a background of a large tree with roots

Static files: Fastest to load, most portable, simplest to host $$$

Data (a cloud of a bunch of Headless CMS provider logos)

Data to HTML

Matthew Phillips tweets “I think what’s great about Eleventy is how it was able to simplify SSGs to just 2 concepts: data sources and templates”

A screenshot of the 11ty.dev Netlify Deploys screen, with text saying “oopsie daisy, hot swap the site”

A large “Serverless” text on a background image of a larger server rack

The text “Serverless first” is crossed out, instead Static first

Netlify Functions (run on every request) On-demand Builders (run on first request, cache for subsequent)

A large “Edge” text on a background of a diving board over a lake

The text “Edge first” is crossed out, instead Static first

Edge: Fast! Personalized. *Not* cached

Installation instructions for Eleventy Edge, add to .eleventy.js, netlify.toml, and a content file at index.liquid

Comparing Performance: Build is the best, Serverless is the worst, On-demand Builders are great when cached, and Edge is pretty fast with a 50ms max

Comparing Cost: build templates pay up front with build minutes, Serverless and Edge are charged per request, On-demand builders only charge for first request. Netlify’s free tier offers 300 build minutes per month, Serverless (including On-demand builders) 125k requests/site/month, Edge 3M /month

Comparing Request-level Features: Build has none, Serverless and Edge have access to Headers Cookies, Forms, URLSearchParams, On-demand builders have none

Case Study

Screenshot of a Netlify Deploy log for the old 0.12.x Eleventy docs: 495 files in 53.65 seconds

Screenshot of a Netlify Deploy log for the new 1.x Eleventy docs: 145 files in 29.73 seconds

/* Build, /authors/* Serverless

/* Build, /authors/* Serverless, /* Edge

A table summarizing the previous slides comparing Build Serverless On-demand Builders, and Edge across Performance, Netlify Free Tier, Cost, and Request-level features

For any project mix and match Build, Serverless, and Edge

For any route/page: mix and match Build, Serverless, Edge, Build + Edge, Serverless + Edge

Tags: Eleventy Speaking

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Zach Leatherman is a builder for the web at Font Awesome and the creator of Build Awesome (née Eleventy/11ty), an award-winning open source website generator. He measures website performance with speedlify and at one point became too fixated on web fonts. He has given 89 talks in nine different countries at events like Beyond Tellerrand, Smashing Conference, Jamstack Conf, CSSConf, and The White House. Formerly part of CloudCannon, Netlify, Filament Group, NEJS CONF, and NebraskaJS. Learn more about Zach »

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