# Trying to understand spurious(?) "home page is blank" warnings

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [February 1, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307 "2017-02-01T17:20:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sometimesfood](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/sometimesfood/32/2588_2.png) [@sometimesfood](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/sometimesfood)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/1 "2017-02-01T17:20:16Z")

</div>

When creating a `public/index.html` from `content/index.md`, I noticed that Hugo emits a “home page is blank” warning. I reported this on the issue tracker ([spf/hugo#3002](https://github.com/spf13/hugo/issues/3002)), but since @bep closed the issue and told me to discuss this here, I would appreciate any help in understanding this behaviour.

## Steps to reproduce

```auto
hugo new site hugo-temp
cd hugo-temp
mkdir layouts/_default
echo '{{ .Content }}' > layouts/_default/single.html
echo Hello world > content/index.md
hugo
cat public/index.html

```

## Expected behaviour

- Hugo should create a new `public/index.html` file containing “`<p>Hello world</p>`”.
- Hugo should not emit any warnings.

## Actual behaviour

- Hugo creates the file `public/index.html` as expected.
- Hugo emits the following warning:

```auto
=============================================================
Your rendered home page is blank: /index.html is zero-length
 * Did you specify a theme on the command-line or in your
   "config.toml" file? (Current theme: "blank")
 * For more debugging information, run "hugo -v"
=============================================================

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 5:51pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/2 "2017-02-01T17:51:36Z")

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You have created a single page with the same URL as the home page (/index.html).

The only way this works is that you also did not provide a template for the home page or the other list pages (try creating \_default/list.html).

If you **had** provided that template, you would see a random behaviour – sometimes you would get one or the other page.

We _could_ make this more intelligently and not create a warning in this case (we will not), but that would make it more complex than needed and would throw out all the parallelism that makes Hugo so blistering fast.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sometimesfood](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/sometimesfood/32/2588_2.png) [@sometimesfood](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/sometimesfood)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/3 "2017-02-01T18:29:59Z")

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> [@bep](#):
>
> The only way this works is that you also did not provide a template for the home page or the other list pages (try creating \_default/list.html).

I see, thanks. I seem to have missed this comment in the [docs](https://gohugo.io/tutorials/creating-a-new-theme#list):

> The home page template is a special kind of List template.

Is there a non-hacky way to make Hugo render content from a markdown file in the `content` directory to `public/index.html` using the “single” layout without copying `layouts/_default/single.html` to another location?

(The typical use case for this would be a site which only consists of simple “single” pages.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 6:52pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/4 "2017-02-02T18:52:24Z")

</div>

No, but if what you want is a 1 page site then

- layouts/index.html
- content/\_index.md

Would be appropriate.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sometimesfood](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/sometimesfood/32/2588_2.png) [@sometimesfood](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/sometimesfood)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/5 "2017-02-02T22:47:01Z")

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Sure, but what about a simple site that consists of “index”, “about”, “contact”, … (which should all be rendered using the same template)? That’s one of the cases where the new “\_index.md” feature comes in really handy.

I just helped two friends of mine to convert sites to Hugo and both could have gotten away just with the “single” layout.

Some thoughts regarding possible workarounds:

- Manually setting `layout = "single"` in \_index.md does not work because \_index.md is always rendered using the list template.
- Abusing the “list” layout by setting `layout = "list"`in all markdown files and creating `layouts/_default/list.html` works in some cases but seems rather cumbersome.
- Symlinking `layouts/index.html` to `layouts/_default/single.html` does not work either (“Symbolic links for directories not supported”).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2017, 3:50am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/6 "2017-02-03T03:50:03Z")

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This has been discussed before. Use the search.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sometimesfood](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/sometimesfood/32/2588_2.png) [@sometimesfood](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/sometimesfood)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2017, 5:58am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/trying-to-understand-spurious-home-page-is-blank-warnings/5307/7 "2017-02-03T05:58:51Z")

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I _have_ used the search and the upshot seems to be “This is currently not possible without using duplicate layout files” (somewhat mitigated by using a dummy partial or similar workarounds).

I am simply trying to a) confirm this b) understand why homepages (\_index.md) are always considered a subtype of list.

Since my original question has been answered and I understand the warnings now, I will simply open a new thread for this question.