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Chobble Template

A free and open source template for small business websites, which you can build on (or employ me to work on) to create a website for your own business really easily.

Screenshot of the example page for the Chobble template

Background

While building static websites for small businesses I realised I was creating the same type of components each time - I was making Eleventy sites, with features like a news system, a contact form, social media links, header images, per-page styles, etc etc.

I was keeping an informal repository of these code snippets on my computers, and realised I could provide some value to the open source community by compiling each of those snippets into a demo site, and releasing the source code under the AGPL3 license.

Features

The template is adapted to the specific way I build websites. It's an "opinionated" template, designed to load quickly with great search engine optimisation potential, and to be hostable at low cost.

To that end, here's a run-down of some of its features (accurate as of April 2025):

  • Automatically responsive and lazy-loading images thanks to Eleventy's image plugin.
  • A pretty RSS feed with instructions, and a sitemap.
  • Pages with tiered navigation, header images, and per-layout themes (if wanted).
  • Minimal CSS from MVP.css, and semantic HTML when possible
  • Product and category pages, with image galleries
  • Turbo for instant page loads
  • A contact form using Formspark for affordable deliveries, and Botpoison to block spammers
  • Fast builds with Nix flakes via Forgejo Actions

I have a lot of ideas about future things the template could do, such as:

  • Encrypted pages for login-only access.
  • Product sales via Stripe and Trolley
  • Event systems with calendar feeds
  • YouTube and audio embeds

How can I use it?

If you're technically-minded, you can clone the source code and start playing away! It's set up for Nix at the moment, but it should be easy to adapt to use whichever Node build process you like.

If you want me to make a website for you based off this template, get in touch. I charge a flat hourly fee for all jobs, and much of the work of building a website has already been completed with this template, so you'll get great value for money.