stefantaitano.com

Personal website and writing home for Stefan Taitano.

Live site: www.stefantaitano.com

This repository powers a personal site built with Eleventy. It mixes long-form writing, a /now page, platform links, generated feeds, and a homepage that is slowly turning into a clearer home for projects, articles, and ongoing work. Stefan is an Army veteran turned ServiceNow consultant, getting deeper into Ruby and slowly training for a 2027 marathon.

What This Site Is

• Personal website
• Article archive
• /now page
• Lightweight portfolio-in-progress
• Home for experiments that do not fit cleanly on social platforms

Current Status

• Phase 1 is done: crawling, metadata, social preview cleanup, and stale-reference cleanup.
• Phase 2 is done: the homepage rewrite, clearer navigation, and a stronger /now path are live.
• Branding is done: slate + amber color scheme, ST monogram logo, favicons, and a real profile photo on the homepage.
• The article archive has real content: three Medium articles ported and one site-native post published.
• The /now page uses dated Markdown entries, shows the latest update first, and pulls live Lichess stats at build time.
• The biggest remaining product work is turning temporary sections into real destinations and tightening content flow.

Stack

• Eleventy as the static site generator
• Nunjucks, Markdown, and data files for content and templates
• Tailwind-based styling plus local CSS layers
• Netlify for deployment
• Generated Atom and JSON feeds
• Generated Open Graph assets and image optimization
• Accessibility checks available through pa11y

Local Development

Requirements

• Node >=20

Install

npm install

Run locally

npm start

Build for production

npm run build

Run accessibility checks

npm run test:a11y

Deployment

The site is configured for Netlify.

• Build command: npm run build
• Publish directory: dist
• Security headers are defined in netlify.toml

The canonical site URL comes from src/_data/meta.js and defaults to:

https://www.stefantaitano.com

If needed, you can override it with the URL environment variable.

Project Structure

src/
  _data/          Site metadata, navigation, personal links, external data
  _includes/      Reusable partials and head templates
  _layouts/       Base, page, post, and tag layouts
  _config/        Eleventy config, filters, shortcodes, events, setup scripts
  pages/          Standalone pages like home, now, privacy, accessibility
  posts/          Blog posts and article content
  common/         Feeds, redirects, sitemap, robots, manifest, misc outputs
  assets/         CSS, JS, SVG, images

Key Files

• src/pages/index.njk: homepage and current preview sections
• src/pages/now.njk: current /now page
• src/pages/articles.njk: article index and pagination
• src/_layouts/post.njk: post layout, newsletter CTA insertion, edit link
• src/_data/meta.js: site URL, metadata, feeds, theme, and testing config
• src/_data/navigation.js: top and bottom navigation links
• src/_data/personal.yaml: personal links and profile/platform data
• src/_includes/partials/newsletter-cta.njk: current Field Notes CTA
• netlify.toml: deployment and security header config

Content Workflow

Add a new article

1. Create a new Markdown file in src/posts/
2. Add front matter such as title, description, and date
3. Add one or two hand-picked internal links under related so the article suggests a useful next read
4. Optionally include hero image metadata if the post needs it
5. Run npm start or npm run build to verify output

related:
  - title: A related article title
    url: /articles/related-article/

Update a page

• Standalone pages live in src/pages/
• Shared metadata and links live in src/_data/
• Reusable UI pieces live in src/_includes/partials/
• Check docs/site-voice.md before writing headings, introductions, project summaries, or calls to action

External or generated content

• Lichess data is pulled through src/_data/lichess.js
• Feed outputs are generated through src/common/feed-atom.njk and src/common/feed-json.njk
• robots.txt, _redirects, and sitemap.xml are generated from src/common/

What Has Been Done

• Personalized the Eleventy Excellent starter into a custom personal site
• Rewrote the homepage with hero copy, profile photo, trail cards, and recent articles
• Built a /now page with live Lichess stats pulled at build time
• Ported three Medium articles and published one site-native post
• Applied slate + amber branding, ST monogram logo, and regenerated favicons
• Cleaned up stale starter content, demo posts, and unused data files
• Replaced the starter README with a project-specific one

What Is Still On The Checklist

The next meaningful improvements are:

• Fix the legal/imprint data path Done: rewritten as a lightweight legal notice with email contact
• Replace the default Open Graph image Done: subtitle updated, 11ty logo replaced with ST monogram on per-post cards
• Build a dedicated Projects page Done: data-driven via projects.yaml, live at /projects/
• Replace the interim Field Notes email CTA Done: links to the Buttondown publication
• Swap default fonts for something that fits the brand Done: Fraunces for headings, Atkinson Hyperlegible kept for body
• Decide whether to add supporting pages like Bookshelf, Uses, and Colophon Done: Colophon live at /colophon/, Bookshelf live at /bookshelf/, Uses skipped
• Add end-of-article cross-links so each post suggests the next click Done: articles now use curated related links
• Evaluate privacy-friendly analytics (deprioritized; currently no analytics by choice)

To-do

• Fix the legal/imprint data path
• Replace the default Open Graph image
• Build a dedicated Projects page
• Replace the temporary Field Notes email CTA with a real signup destination
• Swap fonts (Fraunces display, Atkinson Hyperlegible body)
• Add optional supporting pages (Colophon and Bookshelf live; Uses skipped)
• Add article cross-links or related-post navigation
• Evaluate privacy-friendly analytics (deprioritized)

Notes For Interested Folks

This site started from the Eleventy Excellent starter, but it has been steadily reshaped into a personal site with custom homepage content, a custom /now page, personal metadata, feed configuration, and project-specific content structure.

If you are browsing because you are interested in the site itself, the best places to start are:

• src/pages/index.njk
• src/pages/now.njk
• src/_data/meta.js
• src/_layouts/post.njk

Credits

• Built on top of Eleventy Excellent by Lene Saile
• Inspired by the broader Eleventy, accessibility, and build-excellent-websites community