Migration spike : simpler stack with an eventual redesign as the cherry on top

[sidd190]

Summary

This is a draft migration spike for moving Forklore from the current Nuxt stack toward a simpler static-site setup.

[WIP] : #385

The goal is to validate whether Eleventy + Markdown/frontmatter can cover the maintainer landing page and maintainer detail pages while keeping the current production
deployment untouched.

Screencast+From+2026-07-16+02-46-06.webm

I added an isolated eleventy spike under site/, with a brief document mentioning choices, everything is still a draft and I'm working on it, I'll be doing a redesign on top of this branch with help of another branch from this, the goal is first to perfect this to the pixel for the eleventy tech stack instead of just basic outline, so that any design changes made on top of this don't miss any element or content.

The planet part can be a later phase of this, firstly focusing on the whole user facing pages for maintainers.

This PR does not change the current production deployment anyhow (I hope, lol).

How to test the spike

cd site
yarn install --ignore-engines --ignore-scripts
yarn serve

Then open the local Eleventy URL.

Going ahead, can be done in sub issues :

• Removing Nuxt.
• Replacing the GitHub Pages workflow.
• Migrating all maintainer content.
• Final Planet implementation.
• Final visual redesign branches.

Good context to remember

• Some bulk-converted Markdown still contains rough HTML from the existing JSON form answers. A proper HTML-to-Markdown conversion pass is needed before full migration.
• Theme toggle currently uses text glyphs instead of the existing SVG icons, will update it.
• Planet is still planned as a later phase, likely using maintainer RSS URLs from frontmatter and a generated feed cache.

Eleventy is something I need reviews on around how regularly this will update and stuff like that, we can reduce maintanence burden by a lot if it's static, and have it be a markdown/json content heavy pipeline with gh actions automating and validating stuff.

[idlip]

Hey @sidd190 Are you pushing more commits on this PR?

I can see it as in-place replace for stack. Lets remove planet button/link (lets keep it at last after redesign and all)

• OG images are missing (small thing, text meta should also be fine for now, and image can come back after new redesign)

• Also as planned in call splitting files into components will be useful for reusability (either can be done now or with proper redesign)

• We can leave this stale as long as you think we are good to merge this for temporary duration on main website

• Also 2 issues are pending to be merged as soon as possible

[sidd190]

Hey @sidd190 Are you pushing more commits on this PR?

I can see it as in-place replace for stack. Lets remove planet button/link (lets keep it at last after redesign and all)

• OG images are missing (small thing, text meta should also be fine for now, and image can come back after new redesign)
• Also as planned in call splitting files into components will be useful for reusability (either can be done now or with proper redesign)
• We can leave this stale as long as you think we are good to merge this for temporary duration on main website
• Also 2 issues are pending to be merged as soon as possible

Yes definitely! Let me take the weekend and complete this migration according to the listed points and current plan, Thank you.

[idlip]

Some nitpick changes that'd be good to have:

• 404 page (Not sure if github will throw or eleventy can also)

• Use planet json files and make in-place pages as it is and keep refresh CI.

• Use icons for social media if possible (using from Font would be better?)

• Wrap images to fit width (eg: http://localhost:8000/maintainers/inashivb/)

• update https://github.com/fossunited/forklore/blob/develop/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/get-featured.yml to save issue into new content format so direct PR can be done by authors itself?
  Or we might need script like parse-maintainer.py to run to commit?

[sidd190]

@idlip PTAL! I think this is ready to replace the current forklore website more or less in-place.

The next steps would be design updates and removing the migration architecture brief and adjusting it into the changelog with minimal pointer updates

[idlip]

Works nice, happy that its fast.

As discussed in DM (mattermost), pasting the same for tracking

• OG is given in svg , but social media prefer PNG mostly. So either we need to convert using librsvg or resvg-js lib to png (refer more blogs: https://11tybundle.dev/categories/images/)

• Planet side borders are different main landing (again temporary since there might be full redesign sooner this month)

• Paginating planet landing page would be good (its too long). Even fine if 2 column grid.

Mobile

• Header needs hamburger menu for mobile view. Theme toggle be outside

• Also no side border seen for maintainer page in mobile

• I just realized we show project at top in mobile by default, could we please show profile/person first then project and then questions?
  Idk whats best order, but hoping things will be better with redesign change

• The search+filter is not flex wrapping below for mobile. Even maint card get cut off below 380px

Footer

• Missing rss link

• Also missing rss link in meta header (base.njk)

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="/rss.xml" title="Forklore RSS Feed">
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="/planet/rss.xml" title="Planet Forklore Feed">

For now I was able to find these nitpicks. Rest should be fine as its merge for me to also push

[idlip]

Ok all good. Tested and most of the things work as it is.

Thank you @sidd190 for making the migration happen.

Lets push and see how it goes...