Please read and follow the below guidelines before asking for help in the forum.
How to Request Help
Welcome to the Hugo forums and thanks for using Hugo! The below are a few friendly tips on getting help from the other Hugo volunteers in this forum.
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.
There are too many such sites to mention but if you’re just starting out, here are a couple of sites to take a look at: w3schools, HTML5 Boilerplate or hackr.io. Take a look at the Recommended Reading wiki post in the forum, as well.
Ok, got it, how do I get help?
Thanks for bearing with me on the above, which needed to be said given the sheer volume of people asking similar questions. Here are several points that if you follow, will help get you a positive outcome in the forums:
Search First
Search the forum 
, because it is likely that your question has been asked and answered already. Do your homework.
N.B. We discourage reviving old topics because people who participated in those discussions of yesteryear are usually not here anymore and they rarely reply to questions. It is best to open a new topic rather than bumping an old one.
Read the Docs
Read the docs, because they are pretty good and a lot of work goes into them. Then read them again. But note that they sometimes lag behind releases a bit. If you can help with that, please do.
A corollary to this is, read the release notes. If you are having a problem after upgrading Hugo, you may find a hint here.
Frequently Asked Questions
See https://gohugo.io/troubleshooting/faq.
General thread mechanics
Create a new thread in support, for each new issue. Generally speaking, let us know:
- What you were doing or what you tried
- What you expected
- What actually happened
Write your forum posts in markdown.
Do not post screen captures of your code. Instead, place code and configuration examples within fenced code blocks. For example:
```
{{ range .Pages }}
{{ .LinkTitle }}
{{ end }}
```
When you do get an answer, mark the best answer in the thread using the checkbox icon from the comment action menu (with like, edit, bookmark etc). This marks the thread as solved. Please do not add words like SOLVED to the title.
Finally, please close the loop, by posting a summary in your thread about how you were able to solve the problem. In fact, keeping communications public, clear and complete helps the project.
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.
Git repository hosting services include Github, Bitbucket, Codebase, Gitlab, Sourcehut, and others. If you select Github, even if you do not know git or have a repository, you can use Github “gists” for pasting logs and files. You can include multiple files in a single gist, like this one.
Are you using a theme?
Consider contacting the theme’s author, if it is a theme-specific question because often the author will know better than the random passer-by in the forum. Check the theme’s README. But at least include a link to the theme, to help a person trying to help you.
Include Environment Details
Include the output of hugo env from the command line:
$ hugo env
hugo v0.125.4-cc3574ef4f41fccbe88d9443ed066eb10867ada2+extended linux/amd64 BuildDate=2024-04-25T13:27:26Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
GOOS="linux"
GOARCH="amd64"
GOVERSION="go1.22.2"
github.com/sass/libsass="3.6.5"
github.com/webmproject/libwebp="v1.3.2"
github.com/sass/dart-sass/protocol="2.7.0"
github.com/sass/dart-sass/compiler="1.76.0"
github.com/sass/dart-sass/implementation="1.76.0"
Simple Code of Conduct
Finally, this is a positive and friendly community, and as with other open source projects, the Hugo project runs on unpaid volunteer work. Please be reminded of a couple of rules to make things easier in the forum:
- Pitch in!, and offer what help you can, as there is never enough time to do everything. If you noticed that something is lacking in the docs, you’re probably right, so please contribute!
- Assume good intentions. English is the language of the forum except for a couple subforums, but, it is not every user’s native language. Try to avoid too much slang, abbreviations, or idiomatic expressions.
- Keep it civil, courteous and polite. No personal or ad hominem attacks.
- Don’t waste people’s time.
- Discussion should be on topic, related to
hugousage. No off-topic topics like general JavaScript or CSS, or politics, please. - Consider this forum as the official support forum, not Stack Overflow or Reddit.
We haven’t had to do it very often, but, we reserve the right to ban or suspend from this community anyone who cannot play by the rules. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.