Why a Dev Blog at All? 🛠️

I’m building an app — and thank the gods and the AIs that help us do this 🙏 — and somewhere along the way it clicked:

I want to document the experience of building it.

The highs and lows.
The trials and tribulations.
The wins, the losses.
The smiles… and yes, occasionally the cries.

Not as a generic blog.
Not as “thought leadership.”

But as part of the project itself — a dev log that tells the story of this thing I’m making.

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The Fork in the Road 🤔

My first instinct was simple:

“I’m already using Next.js — I’ll just drop a blog/ folder in there and call it a day.”

Then I remembered how quickly 11ty (Eleventy) can grab Markdown, images, and just get out of the way. That got me thinking:
Should this dev blog be part of the app, or alongside it?

So I asked the AI for a clean comparison.

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Plan: 11ty vs Next.js for a Simple Dev Blog 🧭

Goal:
A fully separate, Markdown-based dev blog with images.
A separate build step is totally fine.

Here’s the breakdown.

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Option 1: 11ty (Eleventy) ⚡

• Simple static site generator, ideal for Markdown-first blogs
• Fully decoupled — lives in its own folder
• Markdown + images work out of the box
• Excellent plugin ecosystem (RSS, syntax highlighting, etc.)
• Outputs pure HTML — boring in the best way
• Separate, fast build (npm run build inside the blog folder)

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Option 2: Next.js Blog (MDX / Contentlayer) 🧩

• More complex to set up for a fully separate blog
• Tightly coupled to the app (routing, config, build)
• Markdown + images are possible, but image handling adds complexity
• RSS requires manual setup
• One build step if integrated — but more moving parts

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Pros & Cons at a Glance 📊

Feature	11ty (Eleventy)	Next.js Blog (MDX)
Separation	Fully separate	Tightly coupled
Simplicity	Very simple	More complex
Markdown + Images	Native support	Needs configuration
RSS	Plugins available	Manual setup
Reliability	Extremely high	More dependencies
Build	Separate, fast	Integrated, slower

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Further Considerations 🧠

• 11ty shines when you want something boring, reliable, and easy to maintain.
• Next.js shines when the blog is the app — which isn’t my goal here.

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Recommendation ✅

For this dev blog:

Use 11ty in a subfolder.

It keeps the blog:

• simple
• decoupled
• Markdown-native
• resistant to framework churn

The app can evolve.
The dev blog can quietly do its job and tell the story.

And honestly?
That separation feels right.