Before picking 11ty as my Jamstack solution, I realized that I may need to create some tools that help with content and site creation. I wasn't sure if I would also be doing posts on other blogging sites, but I was sure that I would need to produce thumbnails for my blog posts, and I wanted a universal solution.
I decided to create a simple Jamstack Website Tools GitHub repository where I could group tools that I use for content and site development.
This is a post in the "Blog on a Budget" series.
I created the Jamstack Website Tools repository so that I would have a location to put any website/content development tools related to my blog website. This boilerplate is set up as a GitHub template repository so that it will be easy for people to duplicate and use as needed. Since it is an open source project, bug fix and new feature Pull Requests are welcome.
Currently this repository only has one tool, but it is likely that more will be added over time.
NOTE: This public repository is based off an internal private repository. As I develop new tools that are worth sharing, I will add them to this public repository.
Before I was sure which Jamstack solution I would settle on, I realized there was the possibility I would end up putting blog posts on multiple platforms. Since this was a possibility, I wanted a tool that I could use to generate a lot of thumbnails quickly (that I could then grab to use for posts or social media).
I figured even if I chose a Jamstack solution that had its own tools for this purpose, a thumbnail generating tool could still have use for other situations as I create more online content.
The documentation for how to use this tool is in the GitHub repository.
Overall I am happy with how this tool turned out. It allows me to play with thumbnail size and quality to try to find a good balance between the two. Since my goal is to run my blog affordability, having the ability to tweak thumbnail file sizes easily is useful.
I don't know what tools I will all develop as I continue to work with 11ty for my Jamstack website, but if I build things that I feel may be useful to others, I will add them to this GitHub repository.
As for the thumbnail generator, I am currently using it to generate thumbnails for my blog and it works well. It didn't take long to write, so it has been a good return on investment.
Now that I have settled on 11ty, I see that there are a lot of official plugins and at least one plugin related to image generation. I may find that, over time, it makes more sense to use an 11ty plugin of some sort to handle the thumbnail generation for me. If I do, I will likely update this post with the details.