Home is a list of pages

[alper]

I setup a new site with this theme: GitHub - tomowang/hugo-theme-tailwind: Clean card Hugo theme for blog, created by using tailwindcss

When I go to the base site it shows me a list of the pages. Why would it do this and how is it configurable?

I can’t find a configuration or an easy way to set something as the frontpage. What am I missing?

[alper]

OK. For this theme I got it, it was a bit oddly documented:

  # dir name of your blog content (default is `content/posts`).
  # the list of set content will show up on your index page (baseurl).
  contentTypeName = "posts"

[alper]

Turns out that wasn’t it.

[chrillek]

The theme is written for blogs, and the behavior is clearly documented in its readme. If you don’t want that, set up a home page template as home.html in your layout directory (not the theme ones!).

As long as there’s no home.html available, Hugo will use the list template.

Also, the theme seems to be using the old (pre 0.146) template system. The theme author might want to update it, or you might want to think about using another theme (or writing one yourself).

[alper]

I had a hell of a time figuring out a theme to use that displays taxonomies. How can I evaluate themes on recency?

[chrillek]

I can’t tell you anything about themes. Wrote my own, and that’s what I suggest in general to Hugo newbies.

First, you learn your way around Hugo, and second, you get exactly what you want. Nothing missing, and certainly not a lot of stuff that you’ll never need.

If you click on a theme in Hugo’s collection, you’ll get a “last modified date”. That might be an indicator. Also, if the theme uses a _partials directory instead of partials, it should work with Hugo 0.146 and later.

[alper]

I’m trying out more themes and all of them show a list of pages on the site root.

[chrillek]

I’ve said all that I can say about that: Put a home.html in your layouts directory that does what you want (which you didn’t say yet, btw).

[jhvanderschee]

You are using a theme. In other words: a website designed in created by somebody else, and made available to you for free. The chance that such a theme has a list of posts on the homepage is high. The chance of that being configurable (within the theme) is low.

However… you should know that Hugo is perfectly capable of showing whatever you like on your homepage. It is an SSG that (without a theme) allows you to create any webpage and any design. This is done by creating a homepage layout (home.html in layouts).

This is a forum where you can get answers on Hugo questions (like: how to create a different layout for home?). If you have a theme related question, you will have a higher chance of getting an answer when you ask that question to the specific theme author.

Hope this helps you ask the right question to the right person!

[alper]

@jhvanderschee

The chance of that being configurable (within the theme) is low.

Everybody says the default is for Hugo to show the thing with more stuff on the home page, but that isn’t happening, or I’m misunderstanding it.

@jhvanderschee

when you ask that question to the specific theme author.

I wanted to know whether there’s a broader convention/best practice around the main page that I should assume theme authors would follow.

[alper]

@jhvanderschee

home.html in layouts

OK. I got confused between home.html and index.html but adding a script redirect in home.html works.

But using javascript to do this is not an ideal solution. I would also like not to copy-paste one of the list templates into this home in its entirety if possible. Is there a clean way to change the default behaviour of Hugo?

[irkode]

@alper

but adding a script redirect in home.html works.

yes, usually the wrong approach to change display of the target site.

@alper

Is there a clean way to change the default behavior of Hugo?

There is no Hugo default here.

Abstract view

• Hugo (SSG):

  “Compiles” your sources, (config, Markdown, JS, css…, layouts, partials to a target (a website).

• Theme:
  set of sources, merged together with all your other sources
  and with HUGO, you may change the behavior or that foreign sources…

results in

If you just use content and the rest from outside - you have to take what they can. maybe set some config options if documented.

If you want to Customize more you need to write “sources”. Overwriting the foreign code is the default mechanism in Hugo to change things where the foreign code does not do what you want

I would recommend to read requesting Help which gives some insight of what you should invest. and read the basic chapters of Getting Started and Content management.

Theme search

There are definitely Themes that allow different styling of the HomePage compared to the other Sections…

As @chrillek mentioned:

• it depends on what “different” means
• using a “home.html” is a save way to add it (with that theme).

Maybe a Portfolio theme Portfolio theme is something …

[alper]

@irkode

yes, usually the wrong approach to change display of the target site

So it doesn’t really work. The redirect would work sometimes and some other times it doesn’t. Is it possible to get debug logs here of what is being loaded through hugo server?

@irkode

There is no Hugo default

That’s weird though that if most teams would default to showing my most recent list of pages instead of my posts. I have two folders content/pages and content/posts. Why would it show content exclusively from one but not the other?

I’ll do a test removing the pages folder entirely to see if that makes a difference, because it would have to pull content from somewhere.

[irkode]

@alper

So it doesn’t really work. The redirect

As I said - That’s the wrong approach

• The theme uses the old template system, so to be on the safe side use Hugo v0.145.0 with it.
• copy theme/layouts/_default/list.html to your layouts/_default/index.html
• adjust the copy to your needs. to remove the list of pages replace lines 19-38 with your own stuff you want to display.

be aware, that the theme follows it’s way how to organize the stuff, so you will have to do it in the “themes way” for a smooth experience. Same for pages vs posts

@alper

debug logs here

search for “debug” in the Docs

• raise the --logLevel
• add warnf statements printing the stuff you need

---

This discussion about general things and expectations without really knowing what you have and what you want and what you know won’t get us to any kind of solution.

Please let me cite from the requesting help mentioned before.

Some Knowledge Required

Dare we say that while Hugo is indeed pretty magical, it is not meant to be a “magic wand” to suddenly give you a published website a la Square Space or Wordpress. You are expected to already know how to assemble a static web page, for which you do need some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, command line, and text editors. Or how to prepare a space to host your website. The bottom line is, if you are unwilling to invest the time required to learn these things, then Hugo is not for you.

If you do put the time in, Hugo will help you rapidly merge your HTML templates, CSS, JavaScript, media, and even data, into a flexible working site. In addition, you get the added benefit of understanding how things fit together, which in turn makes understanding a variety of website builders and content management systems much easier. It is really a worthwhile investment to put the time in, to learn the basic building blocks well.

Ok, got it, how do I get help

• Search First
• Read the Docs (it also has a search)

General thread mechanics

General thread mechanics

Create a new thread in support, for each new issue. Generally speaking, let us know:

1. What you were doing or what you tried
2. What you expected
3. What actually happened

Let us see your code

Let us see your code

Include a link to the source code repository of your project, because we really need the context of seeing your templates and partials to be able to help you. It is trivial to do a quick git clone on your repo, then run hugo server in your project, to help you out. On the other hand, recreating your code from screenshots, or sort of guessing at it, is not.

If you can’t share your repository for whatever reason, consider creating a dummy repo that you can share, which reproduces the problem you’re experiencing.

---

always willing to help, but guess I’m out here.

[alper]

@irkode

The theme uses the old template system, so to be on the safe side use Hugo v0.145.0 with it.

I’m guessing it’s going to be a pain to update this theme to the new template system? It’s been one of the few themes that checks most of my boxes.

I’m also not sure how to audit other themes on my shortlist.

@irkode

pages vs posts

I got rid of my pages and then it shows posts cleanly on the frontpage. I guess this is going to be the same for other themes as well, so there’s some kind of magic happening inside there that I’m not aware of.

@irkode

This discussion about general things and expectations without really knowing what you have and what you want and what you know won’t get us to any kind of solution.

I get that. My questions will only be around general issues here.

I’ve read a bunch of documentation and I’m well versed in these kind of systems in general.

[alper]

OK. The issue is solved with Claude:

Looking at your hugo.yaml, I found the issue! Check lines 87-89:

permalinks:
section:
posts: /blog/
pages: /

The pages: / line is the problem! This tells Hugo to render the pages section at the root URL /.

So when you visit /:

• You’re NOT loading the home page (where .IsHome would be true)
• You’re loading the pages section list (where .IsHome is false)
• The list.html template sees .IsHome = false, so it skips the filtering
• You see all pages from the pages section

Fairly obvious but I had set these in the very beginning and not thought about them anymore.