Create New Posts Faster in 11ty

• Feb 06, 2025 at 19:49 IST (updated on Mar 23, 2025)
• 4 min (792 words)
• 11ty· coding

I recently moved my personal blog from WordPress to 11ty and also documented the entire process in a video. I like the current setup in 11ty, but there's an issue...

It takes me a lot of time to create a new blog post, as my blog posts are organized in content/blog/<new-post> folders, as you see in the below screenshot.

As of now, just to create a new blog post, I have to open multiple folders, create the markdown file, and then write all frontmatter properties. And it takes a lot of time.

So... I asked Cursor AI to create a Node.js script that can do all that with just a single command. If you prefer, you can watch this video or continue reading below to learn more.

I just asked Cursor composer to create a Node.js script where I can run something like node create.js new-post and it should automatically create a new file index.md in the specified sub-folder in the content/blog folder. And also asked it to auto-populate the frontmatter properties like title, description, date, and tags.

If you want, below was the exact prompt that you will also see in the above video:

Write a node.js script that creates new blog posts in content/blog folder.
node create.js rise-of-cursor
if i run a command like above, it should create a new folder in the content/blog folder and then create a index.md file and then populate title, description, tags, and date properties for the frontmatter.

When I ran the terminal command, it gave me an error which I just copied-pasted to Cursor and asked it to fix the issue. And then it provided me with the working script, which is below:

import fs from 'fs';
import path from 'path';
import { fileURLToPath } from 'url';
// Get the current directory using ES modules
const __filename = fileURLToPath(import.meta.url);
const __dirname = path.dirname(__filename);
// Get the slug from command line arguments
const slug = process.argv[2];
if (!slug) {
    console.error('Please provide a slug for the blog post');
    console.error('Example: node create.js my-new-post');
    process.exit(1);
}
// Create the blog post directory and content
const blogDir = path.join('content', 'blog', slug);
const indexFile = path.join(blogDir, 'index.md');
// Create directory if it doesn't exist
if (!fs.existsSync(blogDir)) {
    fs.mkdirSync(blogDir, { recursive: true });
}
// Generate the frontmatter content
const title = slug
    .split('-')
    .map(word => word.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + word.slice(1))
    .join(' ');
const now = new Date();
const date = now.toISOString().replace('T', ' ').slice(0, 19) + '+00:00';
const content = `---
date: ${date}
tags:
- blog
title: ${title}
description: Add your description here
---
Write your blog post content here...
`;
// Write the file
fs.writeFileSync(indexFile, content);
console.log(`✨ Blog post created successfully at: ${indexFile}`);
console.log('You can now edit the file to add your content!');

It auto-captures the current date-time as well for the date property, and fills in dummy data for other properties. Now, I can just edit the index.md file and publish a lot faster than earlier.

I think, there might already be a better way to do the same, but this solution is not unproductive either.

Update:

I further enhanced the script to make the workflow even faster. Earlier, once the file is created, I had to manually look through the folders to find the newly created file to start editing; but now, the script also opens the file for editing as soon as it gets created.

I have created a video for the same and have shown how the script works. If you want, below is the complete script:

import fs from 'fs';
import path from 'path';
import { fileURLToPath } from 'url';
import { spawn } from 'child_process';
// Get the current directory using ES modules
const __filename = fileURLToPath(import.meta.url);
const __dirname = path.dirname(__filename);
// Get the slug from command line arguments
const slug = process.argv[2];
if (!slug) {
    console.error('Please provide a slug for the blog post');
    console.error('Example: node create.js my-new-post');
    process.exit(1);
}
// Create the blog post directory and content
const blogDir = path.join('content', 'blog', slug);
const indexFile = path.join(blogDir, 'index.md');
// Create directory if it doesn't exist
if (!fs.existsSync(blogDir)) {
    fs.mkdirSync(blogDir, { recursive: true });
}
// Generate the frontmatter content
const title = slug
    .split('-')
    .map(word => word.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + word.slice(1))
    .join(' ');
const now = new Date();
const date = now.toISOString().replace('T', ' ').slice(0, 19) + '+05:30';
const content = `---
date: ${date}
tags:
- interesting
title: "${title}"
description: "Add your description here"
---
Write your blog post content here...
`;
// Write the file
fs.writeFileSync(indexFile, content);
console.log(`✨ Blog post created successfully at: ${indexFile}`);
console.log('You can now edit the file to add your content!');
// Open the file in VS Code
const absolutePath = path.resolve(indexFile);
spawn('code', ['--goto', absolutePath], {
    stdio: 'inherit',
    shell: process.platform === 'win32'
});
console.log('Opening the file...');

You can edit it as per your requirements and get it working. It will at least save you 30 seconds of your valuable time.