Embed Everything
I recently released an open source Eleventy plugin called Embed Everything. It’s actually seven different plugins and counting, bundled together. I think it has potential!
What it does
The plugin turns URLs into embeds. For instance, drop a YouTube URL into a markdown file, and it comes out as the full thing. So this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQIYZ-iKuG4Becomes this:
Why do this?
I recently re-built my website using Eleventy, which I really like. I think it's a great choice for small personal sites that don’t need to be updated super-often.
One of the reasons I wanted to re-do the site was to ease (back?) into old-school blogging: the low-pressure, digital pastoral sort of thing where you can quickly drop some stray thoughts or share something you found online.
In other words, I want the convenience of “quickly sharing a funny YouTube video on Facebook,” but without the Facebook part. Admittedly, no one will see my funny video because a) they’re all on Facebook, not browsing their impeccably groomed lists of RSS feeds; and b) I’m doing all this out of hermetic self-regard anyway, so who cares.
The point is, Embed Everything makes it about as easy to do that in this bespoke static blogging framework as it is in Facebook, or Wordpress, or whatever. I get to go LARPing as a netizen of the antediluvian blogosphere, but I don’t have to give up the modern conveniences of platform capitalism. And now, neither do you!