---
title: 'Lay out the folders'
description: 'Build the folder shape Baseline expects, and the content folders you will write in.'
slug: 'set-up-the-project'
type: 'article'
date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00.000Z
lang: 'en'
url: 'https://www.eleventy-baseline.dev/docs/tutorial/set-up-the-project/'
---

Baseline has an opinion about where things live. `src/` for what you write, `dist/` for what gets built, and a handful of folders in between that it finds by name.

Build that shape first and every file in the rest of the tutorial has an obvious place to go.

```text
simple-baseline-site/
  src/
    _data/              # site identity lives here
    _includes/
      layouts/          # the shell your pages render into
    assets/
      css/              # one CSS entry point
      js/               # one JS entry point
    content/            # everything you write
      pages/            # pages, which stay put
      posts/            # posts, which are dated and listed
    static/             # copied to the site root untouched
```

## Make the folders

What goes inside splits in two: the folders you write in, and the folders Baseline goes looking for.

### Content folders

This is the one you will live in. Every word you publish goes here, and the shape it takes is the first real decision of the tutorial.

`pages/` and `posts/` split the two kinds of thing a small site has. A page stays put. A post is dated and turns up in a list. Giving them separate folders is what lets each one have its own rules later, which is exactly what the next few pages do: they get different addresses, and eventually different layouts, because they sit in different folders.

There is a third position, and it is the root of `content/` itself. A file there is in no folder, so no folder's rules reach it, which turns out to be what the homepage wants.

`content/`, `pages/` and `posts/` are conventions rather than requirements. Eleventy renders whatever it finds in `src/`, so the naming is your call in the end, but they are worth keeping while you learn where things go.

### The ones Baseline expects

`_data`, `_includes`, `assets` and `static` are Baseline's. It finds them by looking, so renaming one means telling Eleventy about it yourself.

`static/` is the odd one of the four: on disk it stays `static/`, but in templates and config Baseline calls it `public`, the name most generators use. Two names, one folder. It only matters the day you go looking for it in [[project-structure | project structure]].

Here's one Bash command to make them all at once:

```bash
mkdir -p src/_data src/_includes/layouts src/assets/css src/assets/js src/content/pages src/content/posts src/static
```

If your shell doesn't take `-p`, make them by hand from the tree above.

The `dist/` folder is missing on purpose. It appears the first time you build your site.

You are ready to wire in Baseline next.