My Plaintext Blog

Deploying to Web 1.0 Hosting

2026-09-30T00:00:00Z

Everything this theme builds is plain HTML, so it works as-is on hosts designed for old devices and the smallweb.

Web 1.0 Hosting is an option I personally recommend. Sites hosted with it are reachable over both HTTP, on IPv4 and IPv6, by raw IP, through their WAP gateway for old phones, and inside the Yggdrasil overlay network.

Steps

Register at web1.0hosting.net/register and pick a login and a free domain (.w10.site, .w0.am, .narod.ws, or .oldcities.org). Credentials are sent by email. Note that Microsoft and Apple mailboxes (outlook/hotmail/live/icloud) reject their mail, so use a different address.
Run npm run build.
Upload the contents of _site/ to your site's root, either over FTP/FTPS with the emailed credentials, or via the browser-based Web FTP uploader.
Done! Your site is live at http://yourlogin.w10.site.

Host-specific notes

Rename _site/404.html to error404.html, as that's the filename web 1.0 hosting looks for. (src/_redirects is Netlify-only)
A humans.txt in the site root (<=400 chars) sets your description on their "last edited / most visited / most liked" listing pages.
An empty file named modem in the root caps your site's bandwidth at 5 kbps, if you want the authentic dial-up experience.
Optional extras: server-side includes, plus guestbook/chat/counter CGI scripts that work in ancient browsers. See their FAQ.

Support a friend of the small web

Denys, who runs the ELPiS Web 1.0 zine, has been diagnosed with cancer. He is currently living in Ukraine and does not have funds for medication beyond painkillers. If this theme or the smallweb has given you anything, please consider donating or sharing (original post):

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2PYBDTJ6EM54U
Monobank: https://send.monobank.ua/6hDcCqG3tc
BTC: bc1qwmkngqgxw3kzu35lp2npkjtepghhx6mftkfw6g
ETH: 0x5931d8E3F279eb65F71295374a9425a32032F473

Formatting Demo

2026-01-02T00:00:00Z

This post displays every piece of Markdown syntax the theme supports, so you can see how each renders. Delete this file and hello-world.md and add your own writing.

Paragraphs

A blank line starts a new paragraph. A single line break stays in the same paragraph. End a line with a backslash
for a hard break.

Headings

The page title is the only h1. In the post body, ## through ###### all work. Every heading has a literal # marker relative to its level.(aria-hidden, since the heading tag announces the level to screen readers):

Third level

Fourth level

Fifth level

Sixth level

Setext-style headings (=== or --- under a line of text) also work, but this page sticks to ATX syntax.

Emphasis

italic or italic, bold or bold, bold italic, and ~~strikethrough~~ all render normally. Escape a marker with a backslash to print literally: *not italic*.

Links

Inline links and links with a title display as anchors. A URL in angle brackets autolinks, https://www.11ty.dev/ as do email addresses, mail@example.com.

Reference-style links work too, see the 11ty docs.

A bare URL like https://example.com is not linkified (linkify is off), so wrap in <> if you want it clickable.

Images

Images are not embedded. ![a red fox in snow](/assets/fox.jpg) renders as a plain link to the image file:

[image: a red fox in snow]

An image with no alt text becomes just [image]:

[image]

Lists

Unordered, nested (-, *, and + markers are equivalent):

one
two
- nested with a two-space indent
- another nested item
three

Ordered (1. or 1) delimiters both work):

first
second
third

Blockquotes

A quoted paragraph gets a literal "> " prefix on top of the usual indentation, the way a plain-text quote looks in email.

Multi-paragraph quotes work.

Nested quotes

go deeper.

Blockquotes can contain any other block element:

a list item

another item

and inline code

Code

Inline code like const x = 1 and fenced blocks get a faint background tint. Fence with triple backticks and an optional language hint:

function wordCount(html) {
  const text = html.replace(/<[^>]+>/g, " ");
  return (text.match(/\S+/g) || []).length;
}

Tilde fences work too:

a fenced block with no language

For a literal backtick inside inline code, fence with double backticks: `like this`.

Tables

Tables scroll horizontally inside their own box instead of going past the width of the viewport, and support column alignment:

Feature	Syntax	Result
left align	`:---`	left
centered	`:---:`	center
right align	`---:`	right

Horizontal rules

---, ***, or ___ on its own line displays as a clipped full-width rule:

Raw HTML

html: false in set in the markdown-it config, and so raw markup prints literally instead of executing: <em>this stays as text</em>. To actually italicize, use asterisks.

Likewise, Nunjucks templating is disabled in post bodies (markdownTemplateEngine: false), so {{ 2 + 2 }} stays literal instead of evaluating.

ASCII punctuation

Typographic punctuation in source pages and posts are normalized to ASCII at render time. This means "curly quotes", em--dashes, en-dashes, and ellipsis... all render as regular ", --, -, and .... Code spans and URLs are not normalized.

Hello, World

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Welcome! This is an example post from the plaintext 11ty theme starter. Delete it (and formatting-demo.md) and write your own.

How Posts Work

Every file in src/posts/ is a post. Front matter only needs a title, date, tags, and summary. The slug and word count are computed automatically:

---
title: My First Post        # -> permalink: /my-first-post/
date: 2026-01-01
tags: [meta, example]
summary: One line of text.  # -> shown under the title in listings
---

Post body here, in Markdown.

The URL slug comes from title, via Eleventy's slugify filter.
The word count under the title is computed from the post body.
Use date: YYYY-MM-DD (no time) unless you need to control ordering between two posts on the same day.
- You can also set displayDate: YYYY-MM-DD explicitly alongside a full date.

What to edit

Customie this site using the theme.config.js file in the repo root. That's where you can change the site name, URL, author, intro line, nav links, footer text, and how many posts show on the home page and in the feed, etc.

src/pages/about.md and src/pages/colophon.md are plain pages, edit them freely or delete them and remove the corresponding entries from theme.config.js's nav array. Any .md/.njk file you add to src/pages/ becomes a page at sitename.com/<filename>/ automatically.

That's it.