How We Built Web Awesome with 11ty (and Why It’s So Fast)

Build once, run everywhere.
In this full-nerd, front-end-leaning episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Zach Leatherman (creator of Eleventy) and Konnor Rogers (Web Awesome developer) to chat about how a static site generator just might be the key to building some of the most powerful, performant documentation on the web.

We dig deep into Eleventy’s evolution, Web Awesome’s hybrid architecture, and how a team of devs found a way to keep docs fast, flexible, and secure — without rewriting everything from scratch or giving up on open source values. Spoiler: they didn’t go full ExpressJS for fun.

Whether you’re a seasoned dev or a newb, this one's packed with insight, edge-case explorations, and some seriously satisfying build-time nerdery.

In this episode, we explore:

⚡️ Why Eleventy’s simplicity still scales
 🧠 Making static sites feel dynamic (without a heavy JS framework)
 🔐 How Web Awesome handles auth + private docs with minimal friction
 🚫 Avoiding vendor lock-in and runtime gotchas
 📦 The future of Eleventy in browsers, edge runtimes, and beyond

Pull up your terminal. This one’s for you.

🔗 Links & Credits

• 🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin
• 🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns (Lemon Productions)
• 🎹 Interstitial music by Zach Malm
• 🎥 Video support by Isaac Chase
• 🔗 Eleventy
• 🔗 Web Awesome

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