Fixing unwanted empty tags in Eleventy
While building this blog with Eleventy, I noticed something strange — many empty HTML tags were being rendered between paragraphs. As a first-time Eleventy user, I wasn’t sure why this was happening or how to fix it.
After some digging through the documentation, I realized that I didn’t actually need certain tags in my templates — at least not at this stage. The issue stemmed from how Eleventy processes content and collections.
Once I inspected my eleventy.config.js, I saw it already included a few helpful functions from the Configuration API. I simply needed to pass the correct folder path to the addCollectionmethod. From there, thecollectionApi handled everything I needed — without any additional hacks or complexity.
What surprised me most was how easy and fast it was to organize and display my content once I understood the basics. The experience gave me a new appreciation for how powerful Eleventy is, even with minimal configuration.
If you're running into similar issues with Eleventy or are just starting out, don’t worry — most of the magic is already built in. A quick look into the config file can often reveal the solution.
Links I found interesting
Is it Accessible? By Scott O'Hara