[SOLVED] Selecting menu items opens blank screen

#1

Hi, I’m using the Blackburn theme. See the code at https://github.com/david-j-m/rfp
The home page is fine.
I have a menu in the sidebar with 5 items (the five folders in the content folder, each with _index.md ) clicking any of these items produces a blank screen - no 404, or any other error, just a blank white screen.
Please can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong.

Thanks
David

#2

I suggest using a simpler theme until you’ve figured out the content layout. Normally you put all your pages into a section, maybe called pages, and then set a permalink pattern to remove the section from the URL.

Currently all your pages are sitting in the content folder, and you don’t set permalinks anywhere, so I would make sure you get those working; the theme will work once you know which template you are calling for those pages.

#3

Thanks Maiki for your input

Can you suggest a good starter theme, I’d specially like to understand the menu system, so if you can suggest a simple theme with menus it would be appreciated.

Thanks

David

#4

Page bundles are pretty tricky to get your head around…but I think that’s where you’re finding problems.

First step, read this great explanation of hugo page bundles, especially the flow chart down the bottom.

I think you’ll find you want to be using leaf not branch bundles. So rename all your _index.md and replace them with index.md. And also, the way the blackburn theme works is that the homepage (index.html) shows a list of your most recent ‘blog posts’. So it doesn’t work with an _index.md file in the /content directory (or, by the way, an index.md file). What you need to do is start writing some content in the /posts directory, and that will start populating your front page.

#5

Hope you don’t mind me making a suggestion… Take a look at:

It’s part of a list of simple themes on the theme site you may find useful as you’re getting started. Many of them have menus.

#6

Thanks for all the help, pointers and tips, really appreciated.
I’m taking a bit of time to find my way round - and into - Hugo. At 1st I thought this static site business was about getting back to basics - just throwing together a little html, css and javascript like in the old days - I now see I can forget that, but I also understand that Hugo has great potential and I want to be in there.
I still like my initial template using the Blackburn theme:

rfp-home
rfp-home.jpeg1665×575 56.6 KB

but I understand from the author Yoshiharu Yamashita that there’s a problem with the menus which stops them from opening beyond the 1st level, he suggested I try Hugo-learn-theme but I’d like something a little simpler.
Are there any other themes that would give a sidebar with a vertical menu and page content on the right.

Thanks
David

#7

You might just eyeball the screenshots in the theme directory: https://themes.gohugo.io/

#8

Yes I found the Hyde theme there, so far so good