Hi,
I am a Hugo newbie, so apologies if the cause of the below is obvious to you, but I cannot seem to make a baseURL work if it contains more than just the domain, e.g. `https://mysite.com/test`. For some reason, the links to content contain the “test” dir twice, like e.g. `https://mysite.com/test/test/about/`.
I already searched through the docs and the forum but without a result.
What I have in config.toml:
```
baseurl = "https://mysite.com/test"
[[menu.main]]
name= "About"
url = "/about/"
```
All other relevant settings should be pretty much default. (E.g. I did not set canonifyurl etc.)
And in `content/` there is an `about.md` file. Nothing unusual so far.
Now if I run Hugo (v0.15) to generate the site into $PUBLIC\_WWW/test…
```
hugo -d $HOME/html/test
```
…and point a browser to `https://mysite.com/test`, the home page loads fine but the link to the about page looks like this:
```
https://mysite.com/test/test/about/
```
The theme I use is Hype-X.
Did I overlook something obvious? How can I make this setup work?
Thanks,
Christoph
---
> [@christophberger](#):
>
> Did I overlook something obvious? How can I make this setup work?
This looks strange; you can try to add server-relative URL in the menu config “/test/about”, but other than that I would suggest you try the Hugo source version. We should really, really release a new version soon. A lot have happened since 0.15.
---
> [@bep](#):
>
> I would suggest you try the Hugo source version.
Thanks for this suggestion, it made indeed a difference. Now the menus (about etc.) work fine, but the links that worked previously (like CSS links etc.) now have no `test/` part at all, just as if they ignore the baseURL. (All those links, as far as I checked them, are of the form `{{ "/css/poole.css" | absURL }}`. Strangely enough, the menu links use the same format: `{{ .URL | absURL }}`. (Note this template code is from the Hyde-X templates - I assume this theme has been used and tested since quite a while now.)
This is what I observe with v0.16-DEV:
Menu links work now (from layouts/partial/sidebar.html). Their template uses this format:
```
{{ .URL | absURL }}
```
The “Home” link doesn’t work (also located in sidebar.html). The template format is similar:
```
{ "/" | absURL }}
```
CSS links fail, too (in head.html) - same template format:
```
{{ "/css/poole.css" | absURL }}
```
When I remove the leading slashes, the Home link and the CSS links start working:
```
{{ "" | absURL }}
```
and
```
{{ "css/poole.css" | absURL }}
```
respectively.
I also noticed that image tags from the Markdown source of a blog post do not seem to get processed properly. Of the following image tags, only the last one works:
```
 <-- fails
 <-- fails
 <-- fails
 <-- fails
 <-- works
```
Because of the baseURL setting (“`https://mysite.com/test`”) I should not need to use “`/test/`” at all in the image path.
All of this is quite confusing. I only want to live-test on a real server without exposing the site to the public yet. With local `hugo server` (which ignores the baseURL) everything works like a charm.
Is there any other approach for testing a site from within a subdirectory, without breaking half of the links?
Thanks,
Christoph
---
I finally found a workaround to the issue:
**Use a subdomain.**
It seems as long as the baseURL does **not** point to any subdirectory, everything works well.
---
The `absURL` function only converts _relative paths_. If you pass in a string that starts with `http` or `/`, `absURL` doesn’t prepend the `baseURL`. We should update the docs to explain this behavior.
The image tags in your Markdown are a bit of a special case. The `blackfriday` package renders that content without Hugo processing the URLs/paths. Hugo’s `baseURL` capabilities come into play only in the layouts. If you want to use `absURL` from within your content, you’ll need to create a shortcode for that. For example:
```auto
```
---
After looking at the code, I need to correct my last post.
> [@moorereason](#):
>
> If you pass in a string that starts with `http` or `/`, `absURL` doesn’t prepend the `baseURL`.
That should be: If you pass in a string that starts with `http` or `//`, `absURL` doesn’t prepend the `baseURL`. Note the double slash.
`absURL` does prepend the `baseURL` if you pass in a path starting with `/`, but it **removes** any path in the `baseURL` before doing so. So, instead of prepending `https://mysite.com/test`, it prepends `https://mysite.com`.
I don’t know where all this function is being used inside of Hugo, but it is confusing.
---
> [@moorereason](#):
>
> If you pass in a string that starts with http or /, absURL doesn’t prepend the baseURL.
In my tests the baseURL always got prepended, just not always with the correct result. If absURL ignores strings that start with `/`, then there must be some other mechanism that also builds a full URL from the snippets in the layouts (and fails when the baseURL points to a subdir).
Anyway, after switching from subdir to subdomain, I have not seen these problems anymore.
Thanks,
Christoph
---
Don’t know, but maybe the absURL is not used in your layout, there is another way to get a full path:
```
```
These different ways of creating a full path may be a reason that it is working sometimes…
---
Thanks for the hint, I’ll keep this in mind in case I build my own layout. Right now I use Hype-X which works fine so far. I only tweak the visual appearance a bit, that’s enough for me until I get more familar with Hugo theming.
---
I found this old topic when I tried to solve an issue where absURL suddenly was not working after upgrading Hugo from version 0.15 to 0.17. In v0.15 you could use / in absURL like this: `href="{{ "/css/highlight/" | absURL }}default.css"` but now in v0.17 I had to remove the first /: `href="{{ "css/highlight/" | absURL }}default.css"`. to make it work.
I have not seen any documentation that it’s behaviour has changed.
Anyway good to find a solution!