All the news that's fit to ship!

A newspaper-style blog built with Eleventy (11ty) embracing a classic newspaper aesthetic while functioning as a newsletter-first publication.

• Newspaper Design — Multi-column layouts, traditional masthead, drop caps, pull quotes, ruled lines, grayscale palette
• Newsletter-First RSS — Full-content Atom feeds with email-safe HTML, plus category-specific feeds
• Multi-Author Support — Display different authors for articles with author bios
• Social Media Integration — Sharing and follow links for Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads
• Donation Support — Built-in donation section for supporting independent journalism
• Responsive — Mobile-first design that gracefully collapses columns on smaller screens
• Accessible — Semantic HTML, proper heading hierarchy, skip links, ARIA labels
• Print-Ready — Dedicated print stylesheet
• Fast — Static HTML, lazy-loaded images, optimized web fonts

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server
npm start

# Build for production
npm run build

The dev server runs at http://localhost:8080.

Edit src/_data/site.json to customize your site:

{
  "title": "Your Publication Name",
  "description": "Your publication description",
  "url": "https://yoursite.com",
  "author": "Editorial Team",
  "email": "editor@yoursite.com",
  "donationUrl": "https://ko-fi.com/yourusername",
  "social": {
    "mastodon": "https://mastodon.social/@yourusername",
    "bluesky": "https://bsky.app/profile/yourusername",
    "threads": "https://threads.com/@yourusername"
  },
  "masthead": {
    "tagline": "Your tagline",
    "established": "2026"
  }
}

• Set any social platform to null or remove it to hide from the sidebar
• Leave empty string to show the platform but no link
• Provide full URL to enable the follow link

• Set donationUrl to your preferred platform (Ko-fi, Patreon, etc.)
• Remove or set to null to hide the donation section

src/
├── _data/          # Site metadata and navigation
├── _includes/
│   ├── layouts/    # Page layouts (base, home, article, archive)
│   ├── components/ # Reusable components (masthead, footer, sidebar, etc.)
│   └── partials/   # Head, scripts
├── articles/       # Blog posts (Markdown)
├── pages/          # Static pages and category pages
├── css/            # Newspaper-style CSS architecture
│   ├── base/       # Variables, reset, typography
│   ├── components/ # Masthead, article, sidebar, footer styles
│   └── layouts/    # Homepage, article page, archive styles
├── feed.njk        # Main Atom feed
└── index.njk       # Homepage

Create a new .md file in src/articles/:

---
title: "Article Headline"
subtitle: "Optional deck/subheading"
date: 2026-02-06
author: "Writer Name"
category: "News"       # News, Opinion, Features, Culture, Business
featured: true         # Show in featured section on homepage
excerpt: "Article summary for RSS and meta"
image: "/path/to/image.jpg"
imageCaption: "Photo caption"
---

• title (required): Article headline
• subtitle (optional): Deck or subheading
• date (required): Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD format)
• author (optional): Author name (defaults to site author)
• category (required): News, Opinion, Features, Culture, or Business
• featured (optional): Set to true for homepage featured placement
• excerpt (optional): Article summary for RSS and meta descriptions
• image (optional): Featured image URL
• imageCaption (optional): Caption for featured image

• Different authors can be specified per article
• Author bios display in article footers
• Authors appear in article metadata and bylines

• All articles: /feed.xml
• News: /feed/news.xml
• Opinion: /feed/opinion.xml
• Features: /feed/features.xml
• Culture: /feed/culture.xml
• Business: /feed/business.xml

Each article includes sharing links for:

• Mastodon
• Bluesky
• Threads
• Email

The sidebar includes follow links for configured platforms. Configure in site.json:

"social": {
  "mastodon": "https://mastodon.social/@username",
  "bluesky": "https://bsky.app/profile/username", 
  "threads": "https://threads.com/@username"
}

Built-in donation section in sidebar to support independent journalism. Configure your donation URL in site.json:

"donationUrl": "https://ko-fi.com/yourusername"

Placeholder ad space included at bottom of sidebar. Replace the ad placeholder in src/_includes/components/sidebar.njk with your ad code.

Articles are organized into five main categories:

• News: Current events, reporting
• Opinion: Commentary, editorials
• Features: Long-form, in-depth pieces
• Culture: Arts, reviews, cultural criticism
• Business: Industry, economics, tech business

• Featured article section (shows latest featured: true article)
• Latest articles grid (9 articles, excludes featured)
• Sidebar with navigation, newsletter signup, social follows, donation, and feeds

Footer includes:

• Copyright and licensing (MIT code, CC BY-SA content)
• Theme attribution with links
• 11ty attribution

Important Note: The demo articles are real articles written by Brennan Brown and published at https://brennan.day. These are included to demonstrate the theme's typography, layout, and multi-author capabilities. When using this theme for your own publication, you should replace these articles with your own content.

The theme includes SEO protection for demo sites. In src/_data/site.json, set noindex: true to prevent search engines from indexing your demo site:

{
  "noindex": true
}

Important: Remember to set "noindex": false or remove this field when launching your actual publication to allow proper SEO indexing.

AGPL License - see LICENSE file for details.

Content licensing is CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise specified.