Hi. I am looking for a simple tool for building a static website. Hugo was near the top of the recommendation list so I gave it a try.
I downloaded the latest build for Windows and followed the “Quick start” instructions here Quick start. I am getting stuck on the “Add content” step. I copy/pasted the exact text in the “my-first-post.md” file. The markdown is completely ignored. This is what I get
What is it I am doing wrong? I tried a different theme called “archie” with the same result.
welcome to the forum.
I just did a step by step following the quick start guide and I am unable to reproduce your issue. The new page renders fine.
There must be something missing, be faulty with your go. With just the screenshots it’s impossible to track that down and we would be guessing around:
Requesting Help is a must read - it provides the necessary information for both of us to solve your problems and align expectations.
I would replay the quick start double checking everything with a fresh setup. If it still fails … maybe a bug…
To assist the best we need some insights and “affected” code. In your case it’s hard to tell, cause the quickstart works… min:
hugo.tomlcontent/posts/my-first-post.md
additional information by posting the output of:
hugo envhugo -D --logLevel debuga transcript of your commands when following the quickstart may also help.
Thanks for a quick reply! I deleted everything and started fresh. Here’s the transcript from the first half of the tutorial:
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/c/Users/Ivo/AppData/Local/Microsoft/WindowsApps$ cd /mnt/d/Work/Hugo
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo$ hugo.exe new project quickstart
Congratulations! Your new Hugo project was created in D:\Work\Hugo\quickstart.
Just a few more steps...
1. Change the current directory to D:\Work\Hugo\quickstart.
2. Create or install a theme:
- Create a new theme with the command "hugo new theme <THEMENAME>"
- Or, install a theme from https://themes.gohugo.io/
3. Edit hugo.toml, setting the "theme" property to the theme name.
4. Create new content with the command "hugo new content <SECTIONNAME>\<FILENAME>.<FORMAT>".
5. Start the embedded web server with the command "hugo server --buildDrafts".
See documentation at https://gohugo.io/.
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo$ cd quickstart/
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ git init
hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint:
hint: git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
hint:
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint:
hint: git branch -m <name>
Initialized empty Git repository in /mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart/.git/
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ git submodule add https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke.git themes/ananke
Cloning into '/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 4238, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (90/90), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (48/48), done.
remote: Total 4238 (delta 70), reused 42 (delta 42), pack-reused 4148 (from 2)
Receiving objects: 100% (4238/4238), 6.26 MiB | 25.14 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2039/2039), done.
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ echo "theme = 'ananke'" >> hugo.toml
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ hugo.exe new content content/posts/my-first-post.md
Content "D:\\Work\\Hugo\\quickstart\\content\\posts\\my-first-post.md" created
This is my hugo.toml file:
baseURL = 'https://example.org/'
languageCode = 'en-us'
title = 'My New Hugo Project'
theme = 'ananke'
Then I edited my-first-post.md in Notepad with this content:
+++
date = '2026-02-21T05:38:16-08:00'
draft = true
title = 'My First Post'
+++
## Introduction
This is **bold** text, and this is *emphasized* text.
Visit the [Hugo](https://gohugo.io) website!
Here’s the result from the env commands
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ hugo.exe env
hugo v0.156.0-9d914726dee87b0e8e3d7890d660221bde372eec+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2026-02-18T16:39:55Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
GOOS=“windows”
GOARCH=“amd64”
GOVERSION=“go1.26.0”
github.com/webmproject/libwebp=“v1.6.0”
github.com/sass/libsass=“3.6.6”
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ hugo.exe -D --logLevel debug
Start building sites …
hugo v0.156.0-9d914726dee87b0e8e3d7890d660221bde372eec+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2026-02-18T16:39:55Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
INFO build: step process substep collect files 1 files_total 1 pagesources_total 1 resourcesources_total 0 duration 0s
INFO build: step process duration 0s
INFO static: syncing static files to \ duration 6.7237ms
INFO build: step assemble duration 6.7237ms
INFO build: step render substep pages site en outputFormat html duration 63.647ms
INFO build: step render substep pages site en outputFormat rss duration 561µs
INFO build: step render pages 11 content 6 duration 65.3381ms
INFO build: step render deferred count 0 duration 0s
INFO build: step postProcess duration 0s
INFO build: duration 72.634ms
│ EN
──────────────────┼────
Pages │ 11
Paginator pages │ 0
Non-page files │ 0
Static files │ 1
Processed images │ 0
Aliases │ 1
Cleaned │ 0
Total in 86 ms
Finally I run the server and connect with Chrome:
ivo@IVO-HOME:/mnt/d/Work/Hugo/quickstart$ hugo.exe server -D
Watching for changes in D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/archetypes, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/assets, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/content/posts, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/data, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/i18n, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/layouts, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/static, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/archetypes, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/assets/ananke, D:/Work/Hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/i18n, … and 3 more
Watching for config changes in D:\Work\Hugo\quickstart\hugo.toml, D:\Work\Hugo\quickstart\themes\ananke\config_default
Start building sites …
hugo v0.156.0-9d914726dee87b0e8e3d7890d660221bde372eec+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2026-02-18T16:39:55Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
│ EN
──────────────────┼────
Pages │ 11
Paginator pages │ 0
Non-page files │ 0
Static files │ 1
Processed images │ 0
Aliases │ 1
Cleaned │ 0
Built in 33 ms
Environment: “development”
Serving pages from disk
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
I am literally following the instructions from the tutorial, except I’m replacing “hugo” with “hugo.exe”, which is the exe name in the Windows package.
BTW, I am getting the exact same result running from a Windows command prompt, even though the tutorial says not to use it.
This is the generated HTML:
<div class="nested-copy-line-height lh-copy serif f4 nested-links mid-gray pr4-l w-100-l"><p>## Introduction</p>
<p>This is **bold** text, and this is *emphasized* text.</p>
<p>Visit the [Hugo](<a href="https://gohugo.io">https://gohugo.io</a>) website!</p>
the thing here I see is you mix windows and WSL files.
there’s a item in the faq: Frequently asked questions for hugo server command.
I guess it’s not a good idea to mix that things. Either work on windows or WSL using the matching binary.
p.s. i’m on Win 11 and use Poweshell Core - no need to use WSL.
You have Notepad configured to operate with “Formatting” enabled:
Turn it off.
We instruct users to use PowerShell because we need a cross-platform command to do this:
echo "theme = 'ananke'" >> hugo.toml
That command doesn’t do what you think it should with either CMD.exe or Windows PowerShell. I suppose you could use CMD.exe or Windows PowerShell for the other commands, but I wouldn’t… Microsoft created PowerShell for a reason.
Also, if I were you I would use VS Code, Notepad++, or Sublime Text instead of Notepad.
nice catch
OMG, that was it! I bet it’s because of the md file extension. I disabled the Formatting option in Notepad for good. I never ever want it enabled.
And no, I wouldn’t use Notepad for actual work. Most likely Visual Studio.
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