How To Use Tailwind CSS with Eleventy

In this guide, we'll walk through how to install Tailwind CSS in an Eleventy project.

Set up Webpack

This guide assumes you have Webpack installed in your Eleventy project. If you haven't already, follow this guide to prepare your project for Tailwind:

How To Use Webpack in an Eleventy Project →

Install dependencies

Run the following command to install Tailwind and a few other dependencies for Webpack:

npm install --save-dev tailwindcss autoprefixer mini-css-extract-plugin css-loader postcss-loader

Configure the build pipeline

Open up your webpack.config.js file and add the MiniCssExtractPlugin and the CSS rule:

const MiniCssExtractPlugin = require('mini-css-extract-plugin');

module.exports = {
  // ...
  plugins: [new MiniCssExtractPlugin()],
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: [MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader, 'css-loader', 'postcss-loader']
      }
    ]
  }
}

Then, create a postcss.config.js file:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    require('tailwindcss'),
    require('autoprefixer')
  ]
};

Add Tailwind to your CSS

Create a main.css file in the src/styles directory and add the Tailwind directives:

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Then, import your CSS file in your src/scripts/index.js file:

import '../styles/main.css';

Congratulations! Tailwind CSS is now installed in your project.

Customize Tailwind (Optional)

At this point, you’re all set up to work with Tailwind’s excellent defaults.

If you need to customize your configuration, run the following command to generate a minimal tailwind.config.js file:

npx tailwindcss init

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Originally published in the StaticKit guides