what is a static site generator?
a static site generator is a tool for generating a non-interactive website. sites like cohost and facebook and neopets have pages that change constantly whenever a user does stuff. but your personal site doesn't need to do that. you can generate the whole thing in advance or on a schedule. so we call that a 'static site'.
eleventy is a tool for generating a static site. you write some markdown and page templates and then you type the "build command", for my setup this is npm run build. and it builds your site into a single folder which you can then upload to neocities or nekoweb or another static site host!
how do you use it?
you download a template and edit it in a text editor! here's some files I edited in vscode
(wow, I can put the image wherever I want now? thanks cohost!)
im not a computer person
that's not a question but ok. eleventy has an official getting started video you can watch. it's six minutes and it walks you through the basics.
you can also ask other cohosters here or on discord or matrix, there are dozens of us computer nerd types who are just frothing at the mouth to answer your questions (feel free to ask anything you like in the comments on this post)
they even have a sample site you can copy with tagging set up!!! I'm gonna go look at that right now. okay thanks bye