originalfreenations.com

Original Free Nations — cutting-edge research for Indigenous Peoples' liberation. A static site built with Eleventy v4 and Nunjucks, using the 11ty-Headline theme.

The site was migrated off WordPress. originalfreenations.WordPress.2026-07-08.xml is the original WordPress export and is kept in the repo as the migration source of truth — if a post's body, date, tags or images look wrong, that file is the thing to check against. Do not delete it.

CHANGELOG

20 Jul 2026

• add a formspree contact form .njk to _includes apply it to contact.md

17 Jul 2026

• Convert in to Headline 11ty
• Add footernotes
• Add markdown it anchor
• Add TOC

How to use toc : on your post please add this

toc: true

ELEMENTS NEEDED

1. under the navbar make the homepage layout match <headline.ghost>
2. make the footer match <headline.ghost.io>
3. add the following to the 'gh-subscribe' class

<iframe src="https://stevennewcomb.substack.com/embed" width="480" height="320" style="border:1px solid #EEE; background:white;" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

4. to the header set subscribe button to go to: https://stevennewcomb.substack.com/
5. next to subscribe in a complimentary button add a button labeled listen now and link to https://redcircle.com/show/2caa5839-9deb-419c-9347-2458812d9406?utm_source=embedded-player&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=embed-backlink
6. in the footer add a button with a link labeled buy the book https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/pagans-in-the-promised-land-products-9781555916428.php
7. add row of social media icons in the footer including https://www.facebook.com/steventnewcomb use phosphor icons https://phosphoricons.com/?q=facebook
8. check that theme adapation is rather literal except for the additioanl buttons we added and light/darkmode

Stack

• @11ty/eleventy 4.0.0-alpha.10 (the "Build Awesome" v4 line) with the bundled @11ty/nunjucks 4 templating engine. Note this is a prerelease — see AGENTS.md for the v4 alpha gotchas.
• 11ty-Headline — the theme. Ghost's "Headline" news theme, converted from Handlebars to Nunjucks.
• No build-time image pipeline. Images are pre-converted to .webp and served as-is by passthrough copy from src/assets/images/ — see Images. (@11ty/eleventy-img / eleventyImageTransformPlugin used to run over every <img>; the site no longer ships either one. Dropping them took npm run build from ~55s to ~1s.)
• Pagefind — indexes _site after a production build and provides the modal Component UI (⌘/Ctrl + K).
• Pages CMS — browser-based editing via .pages.yml.

Commands

npm install
npm run dev      # dev server + watch at http://localhost:8080 (drafts visible)
npm run build    # production build to _site/ (drafts dropped, Pagefind runs)
npm run clean    # rm -rf _site

Node ≥ 22.

Content model — flat files

Every post, page and draft is a single Markdown file. The filename is the slug and the URL.

src/content/posts/<slug>.md      # a post; the URL is /<slug>/
src/content/pages/<slug>.md      # a standalone page → /<slug>/
src/_drafts/<slug>.md            # a draft (same shape as a post)

There is no src/posts/ or src/pages/, and posts have no per-post images/ directory — all images live in one place, src/assets/images/ (see below). The permalink in the directory data is /{{ page.fileSlug }}/, which now resolves off the filename.

Post front matter

---
title: "An Exorcism, Junipero Serra, and the Papal Bulls"
description: ""        # meta description; blank falls back to the site default
date: 2020-10-22
tags:
  - "inter-caetera"
  - "kumeyaay-nation"
categories:            # optional
  - "Domination Code"
image: "Tecumseh02.webp"   # optional — BARE FILENAME, not a path
authors: adam-brett        # optional — defaults to steven-newcomb
---

• tags drive the topic archives (/tag/<slug>/) and the homepage topic sections (src/_data/theme.yaml picks which tags are featured).

• categories is optional and carried over from WordPress.

• description is the meta description. It is present but empty on every post and page; a blank value falls back to custom_excerpt, then an excerpt, then the site description in src/_data/metadata.yaml.

• image is a bare filename, not a path. It names a file in src/assets/images/. src/content/posts/posts.11tydata.js (and pages.11tydata.js) maps it to the Headline feature_image URL the templates expect:

  image: "Tecumseh02.webp"  →  feature_image: /assets/images/Tecumseh02.webp
  

  Never write a leading / or a directory into image — it would double-prefix. An explicit feature_image in front matter overrides the computed value.

• authors takes an author key from src/_data/siteAuthors.yaml, as a scalar (authors: adam-brett) or a list. It defaults to steven-newcomb.

Headline's own optional fields (custom_excerpt, feature_image_alt, feature_image_caption, authors, template) are still read by the templates and may be added to any post; none of the migrated posts set them, so excerpts fall back to the first ~40 words of the body.

Images

All images live in src/assets/images/ (56 files) and are passthrough-copied as-is to /assets/images/. There is no build-time image plugin and no automatic conversion step, so:

Add new raster images already converted to .webp. (SVGs and favicons are the exception — add them in their own format.)

The raster images (jpg/jpeg/png/gif) were converted once, with sharp at quality 82, and the originals deleted; unused images were pruned at the same time (100 files → 56). Three files are deliberately not .webp: default-skin.png, default-skin.svg and preloader.gif are theme chrome referenced by name from the vendored Ghost CSS/JS in src/assets/built/ — do not rename, convert or delete them.

The LCP hero image still gets a preload, but it is now a plain <link rel="preload" as="image" href="{{ feature_image }}"> in _includes/partials/head.njk — no generated srcset.

Drafts

Anything in src/_drafts/ is a draft (its directory data defaults published to false), as is any post with published: false. Drafts render in npm run dev and are stripped from npm run build. Promote one by moving the file into src/content/posts/ (or setting published: true).

Where things live

src/                   # Eleventy input dir
  content/posts/       # posts, one flat .md per post  → /<slug>/
  content/pages/       # pages, one flat .md per page  → /<slug>/
  _drafts/             # drafts, one flat .md each (dev only)
  index.md             # homepage (layout: home.njk)
  latest.njk           # paginated archive  → /latest/
  authors.njk          # per-author archive → /author/<slug>/
  tags.njk             # per-topic archive  → /tag/<slug>/
  search.njk           # Pagefind search page → /search/
  _includes/layouts/   # default, post, page, home
  _includes/partials/  # cards, meta, head, search, theme toggle, icons
  _data/               # metadata, navigation, theme, authors (Pages CMS editable)
  assets/              # theme CSS/JS/fonts + images/ (all site images, .webp)
  public/              # copied to the site root as-is
eleventy.config.js     # input=src; collections, drafts preprocessor, Pagefind hook
_config/filters.js     # t (i18n), dates (timezone-aware), reading time, slug, …
locales/en.json        # i18n strings for the `t` filter
.pages.yml             # Pages CMS schema
originalfreenations.WordPress.2026-07-08.xml   # WordPress export — migration source of truth

Routes

URL	Source
/	src/index.md (homepage: featured + topic sections)
/<slug>/	a post (src/content/posts/<slug>.md) or page (src/content/pages/<slug>.md)
/latest/	src/latest.njk — paginated archive of all posts
/news/	src/content/pages/news.md — reverse-chronological listing of every post
/tag/<slug>/	src/tags.njk — per-topic archive
/author/<slug>/	src/authors.njk — per-author archive
/search/	src/search.njk — Pagefind
/feed/	Atom feed
/assets/images/…	passthrough copy of src/assets/images/

Build tooling stays at the repo root: config .js files must live outside src/ or Eleventy treats them as templates.

Credits

• Headline — the original theme, by the Ghost Foundation (MIT).
• Eleventy conversion (11ty-Headline) by Adam DJ Brett.
• Phosphor Icons — search and light/dark toggle icons, by Helena Zhang and Tobias Fried.

License

MIT. Headline is © 2013–2026 Ghost Foundation. Site content © Original Free Nations.