# Upgrading hugo version broke website

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [April 17, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426 "2025-04-17T16:16:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 13\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lizzard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/lizzard/32/24385_2.png) [@Lizzard](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Lizzard)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/1 "2025-04-17T16:16:25Z")

</div>

I’m trying to update an old website built in 2021 - unfortunately I don’t have records of which hugo version it was made with originally, but my guess is it’s whathever was current around the time. So far it all seems very broken. To give an example it took me 2 hours just to dig up that I needed to replace “.Site.IsServer” by “hugo.IsServer”.

So my first question would be is there any **documentation of breaking changes** I could have a look at to get an idea what kinds of things have changed?

And I also have a specific question regarding the error I’m currently on. It looks like my **.Site.Params is not populated the same as it used to**. Specifically all params from particular files seem to be missing:  
hugo/  
├─ config/  
│ ├─ default/  
│ │ ├─ config.yaml  
│ │ ├─ languages.de.yaml  
│ │ ├─ languages.en.yaml  
│ │ ├─ params.footer.de.yaml  
│ │ ├─ params.footer.en.yaml  
│ │ ├─ params.hero.de.yaml  
│ │ ├─ params.hero.en.yaml

Params from the “params” section in config.yaml are included in .Site.Params, while those from  
params.footer.en.yaml, params.hero.en.yaml are not there (in neither language). I’ve been reading a lot in the documentation and right now I can’t even find any mention of a file structure like the one I have, so I’m thinking maybe that is the problem? It used to work though.

I know the question is a bit vague and its probably not possible to pinpoint my exact problems without more details. So any general pointers for what I should be looking into would be much appreciated 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![frjo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/frjo/32/18626_2.png) [@frjo](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/frjo)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 7:55pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/2 "2025-04-17T19:55:54Z")

</div>

Changes are documented in the release notes here [Releases · gohugoio/hugo · GitHub](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases). There will be quite a few releases to read through since 2021.

Nothing stops you from downloading an old version, e.g. [Release v0.89.4 · gohugoio/hugo · GitHub](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/tag/v0.89.4), and use that to build your site.

If you only need to update some content that would likely be my first option.

If you on the other hand plan to actively develop the site it’s likely woth the effort to update your theme. Hugo has added a **lot** of features and improvements over the years.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![frjo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/frjo/32/18626_2.png) [@frjo](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/frjo)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/3 "2025-04-17T19:59:24Z")

</div>

Regarding configuration directory see [configuration-directory](https://gohugo.io/configuration/introduction/#configuration-directory) docs.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lizzard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/lizzard/32/24385_2.png) [@Lizzard](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Lizzard)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2025, 2:18pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/4 "2025-04-18T14:18:26Z")

</div>

Thanks a lot! 🙂 I managed to fix a bunch of errors including the config/params issues I mentioned before and the site now builds again. However when opening [http://localhost:1313/](http://localhost:1313/) or any other url like [http://localhost:1313/imprint/](http://localhost:1313/imprint/) it only shows “ **Page not found** ”.

For reference here is the output of hugo server

```auto
hugo server --logLevel debug --environment local --printI18nWarnings --disableFastRender --gc --cleanDestinationDir --openBrowser --navigateToChanged

WARN DEPRECATED: Kind "taxonomyterm" used in disableKinds is deprecated, use "taxonomy" instead.
WARN deprecated: site config key privacy.twitter.disable was deprecated in Hugo v0.141.0 and will be removed in a future release. Use privacy.x.disable instead.
Watching for changes in C:\Users\...Website\hugo\{archetypes,assets,content,data,layouts,static,themes}
Watching for config changes in C:\Users\...\Website\hugo\config\_default, C:\Users\...\Website\hugo\config\local
Start building sites …
hugo v0.146.5-61328976e11cbb9d906b4a790b8a7cd25b2a914f+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2025-04-15T17:54:38Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

INFO static: removing all files from destination that don't exist in static dirs
INFO static: syncing static files to \ duration 217.918ms
INFO build: step process substep collect files 61 files_total 61 pages_total 61 resources_total 0 duration 2.5044ms
INFO build: step process duration 3.5096ms
INFO build: step assemble duration 0s
WARN found no layout file for "html" for kind "section": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN calling IsSet with unsupported type "string" (string) will always return false.
WARN Linking page C:/Users/.../Website/hugo/content/services/development.en.md via params.url /#development
WARN i18n|MISSING_TRANSLATION|en|notFound
WARN i18n|MISSING_TRANSLATION|en|home
WARN i18n|MISSING_TRANSLATION|en|archives
INFO build: step render substep pages site en outputFormat html duration 1.8684026s
INFO build: step render substep pages site en outputFormat rss duration 2.5047ms
INFO build: step render pages 18 content 41 duration 1.8719079s
INFO build: step render deferred count 0 duration 0s
INFO build: step postProcess duration 0s
INFO build: duration 1.8754175s

                   | EN
-------------------+------
  Pages | 18
  Paginator pages | 0
  Non-page files | 0
  Static files | 211
  Processed images | 37
  Aliases | 0
  Cleaned | 0

Built in 2099 ms
Environment: "local"
Serving pages from disk
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1) en
Press Ctrl+C to stop

```

I also checked the hugo/public directory and it does seem to build the files there correctly, I have an index.html and if I open it it has the correct content.  
Also the sitemap.xml has all urls as I would expect them:

```auto
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<url>
<loc>http://localhost:1313/%23development/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://localhost:1313/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://localhost:1313/imprint/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://localhost:1313/team/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://localhost:1313/privacy/</loc>
</url>
</urlset>

```

However all of the above show page not found. I’ve been googling the issue for a while and mostly this seems to be either theme or language/localization related. I looked into both and so far I couldn’t really find an issue with either on my page. Is there any way (other than loglevel which I already used) how I can get hugo server to **output more information** that might help me with debugging this? Is there any way to inspect what urls are pointing to which local directory or similar? Any tips are much appreciated 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![frjo](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/frjo/32/18626_2.png) [@frjo](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/frjo)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2025, 2:43pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/5 "2025-04-18T14:43:14Z")

</div>

In the output avobe there are a number of warnings, i,e, “WARN”. Start by fixing them one by one.

If you need more help we will need a link to your repo.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lizzard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/lizzard/32/24385_2.png) [@Lizzard](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Lizzard)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2025, 3:15pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/6 "2025-04-18T15:15:37Z")

</div>

The warnings didn’t sound like they would be related to localhost:1313 displaying “Page not found”, especially since I can see the html files are built correctly - but sure I will try to get those fixed 🙂

Unfortunately this is a work thing and I’m generally not allowed to share any code publicly. I understand that makes it difficult to help. That’s why I was trying to ask for pointers how I could go about debugging it and where/how I can get more information on how my local files like hugo/public/index.html are linked to the urls like localhost:1313?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![irkode](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/irkode/32/26135_2.png) [@irkode](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/irkode)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2025, 5:24pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/7 "2025-04-18T17:24:53Z")

</div>

could be a config error. check

basurl, uglyurls, permalinks…

maybo you can post your config?

and there are heavy changes in the templat lookup system with 0.146.0-5

maybe give 0.145.0 a try

**update** lines corrected  
tgese two warnings may affect i think

> [@Lizzard](#):
>
> ```auto
> WARN found no layout file for "html" for kind "section": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
> WARN calling IsSet with unsupported type "string" (string) will always return false.
> 
> ```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lizzard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/lizzard/32/24385_2.png) [@Lizzard](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Lizzard)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2025, 12:39pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/8 "2025-04-21T12:39:51Z")

</div>

Thanks for the help! 🙂 I fixed the warnings you mentioned, but unfortunately still getting the “Page not found”. I also tried v0.145.0 but it didn’t seem to change the issue so I switched back.

I’ll post a somewhat censored config

hugo.yaml

```auto
defaultContentLanguage: en
disableLanguages:
  - de
enableInlineShortcodes: true
timeout: 120s
markup:
  defaultMarkdownHandler: "goldmark"
  goldmark:
    renderer:
      unsafe: true
imaging:
  resampleFilter: "Lanczos" # "box"
theme: 
  - hugo-fresh
  - timeline
disableKinds:
- taxonomy
privacy:
  disqus:
    disable: true
  googleAnalytics:
    disable: true
  instagram:
    disable: true
  x:
    disable: true
  vimeo:
    disable: true
  youtube:
    disable: true
    privacyEnhanced: true
params:
  navbar:
    dropdown: false
    logo:
      image: images/logos/logo.png
      hoverimage: images/logos/logo_hover.png
      link: /
      alt: logo alt
  openGraph: true
  debug: false
  sidebar: false
  font:
    name: "Open Sans"
    sizes: [400,600]
  defaults:
    hero:
      buttonlink: "#"
      image: illustrations/hero.png

```

languages.en.yaml

```auto
baseURL: http://www.companydomain.com/
languageName: English
weight: 1
languageCode: en
title: Company | Foo & Bar

```

menus.en.yaml

```auto
navbar:
  - identifier: services
    name: Services
    url: /
    weight: 1
  - identifier: about
    name: Team
    url: team/#team
    weight: 2
  - identifier: projects
    name: Projects
    url: team/#projects
    weight: 3
  - identifier: foo_bar
    name: Foo's bar
    url: "#anchor"
    weight: 5
    params:
      button: true
  - identifier: jobs
    name: Jobs
    url: /
    weight: 4
    params:
      only_render_if_has_children: true

```

params.en.yaml

```auto
description: Lorem ipsum dolor.
images:
  - "/images/image.png"

foo:
  title: foo
  subtitle: foo bar baz
  logos:
  - logo1.png
  - logo2.png
foo_bar:
  title: Foo Bar!
  subtitle: Foo bar <a href="mailto:foo@domain.com">foo@domain.com</a>
  form:
    action: /foo.php
    class: form foo
    button_a: Foo A
    button_b: Foo B
    textA: Lorem Ipsum Dolor :)
    textB: 'Lorem ipsum <a href="mailto:foo@domain.com">foo@domain.com</a>'
    things:
      - name: name
        label: label
        description: lorem ipsum
      - name: nameB
        label: labelB
        description: lorem ipsum
footer:
  logo: logo.png
  fooflag: false

```

Additionally there is also languages.de.yaml, menus.de.yaml, params.de.yaml but they all follow the exact same structure as their english counterpart and are unused.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![irkode](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/irkode/32/26135_2.png) [@irkode](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/irkode)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/9 "2025-04-21T14:49:31Z")

</div>

according to: [Configure menus](https://gohugo.io/configuration/menus/) you should use pageRef instead of url in menu

what about contentInSubdir? where are your english pages.

check your html file  
where does it point to  
is a page there in public

if not  
which template generates the bad ref  
use templates.Current to assist

if - oops multilang. maybe en is port 1414

without source it’s digging in the dark

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![irkode](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/irkode/32/26135_2.png) [@irkode](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/irkode)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2025, 5:38pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/10 "2025-04-21T17:38:13Z")

</div>

just got a tip covering the fragments part of your menu entries. have a look at that one

> [@Hugo menu link to heading using id](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-menu-link-to-heading-using-id/53592/2):
>
> Site configuration [[menus.main]] name = 'Home (Section 2)' pageRef = '/' weight = 10 [menus.main.params] fragment = 'section-2' [[menus.main]] name = 'Post 1 (Section 3)' pageRef = '/posts/post-1' weight = 20 [menus.main.params] fragment = 'section-3' Then the menu code would look something like this: {{ with site.Menus.main }} \<nav class="nav-inline menu"\> \<ul\> {{ range . }} {{ $href := .URL }} {{ with .Params.fragment }} {{ $href = printf "%s#%s" $hre…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lizzard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/lizzard/32/24385_2.png) [@Lizzard](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Lizzard)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2025, 4:42pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/11 "2025-05-05T16:42:09Z")

</div>

So it turned out the page not found issue was somehow a language thing, once I added `defaultContentLanguageInSubdir: true` to my hugo.yaml it started showing my page under [http://localhost:57636/](http://localhost:57636/). While I don’t really understand why I would HAVE to do this in order for it to work, I am okay with using this setting. However a bunch of links, including also pictures and stylesheets are broken, because they used to be **inside** the `public/en/` (and `public/de/`) subfolder, but now they are directly in `public` instead.

As an example, my partial for including stylesheets uses the following code:

```auto
{{- $inServerMode := hugo.IsServer }}
{{- $sass := "style.sass" }}
{{- $cssTarget := "css/style.css" }}
{{- $cssOpts := cond ($inServerMode) (dict "targetPath" $cssTarget "enableSourceMap" true) (dict "targetPath" $cssTarget "outputStyle" "compressed") }}
{{- $css := resources.Get $sass | toCSS $cssOpts }}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{ $css.RelPermalink }}">

```

which in the html looks like

```auto
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style.css">

```

however [http://localhost:57636/](http://localhost:57636/) points to the `public/en/` subdirectory and the stylesheet lies in `public/css/style.css`, so **not** inside the `public/en/` subdirectory where it used to be previously. Therefore the `<link>` is not working. I have the same issue with images and other resources and I’m not sure what would be the proper way to fix it?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![irkode](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/irkode/32/26135_2.png) [@irkode](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/irkode)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2025, 5:01pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/12 "2025-05-05T17:01:42Z")

</div>

> [@Lizzard](#):
>
> defaultContentLanguageInSubdir: true

You don’t have to - just digging in the dark

The embedded image render hook is automatically enabled for multilingual single-host sites if [duplication of shared page resources](https://gohugo.io/configuration/markup/#duplicateresourcefiles) is disabled. This is the default configuration for multilingual single-host sites.

more details:[Default Image Render Hook](https://gohugo.io/render-hooks/images/#default) and [Multilingual](https://gohugo.io/content-management/page-resources/#multilingual)

you specified a target path: `targetPath" $cssTarget` 😉

no way for me to dig in with just some code fragments, sry

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lizzard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/lizzard/32/24385_2.png) [@Lizzard](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Lizzard)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2025, 7:20pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/upgrading-hugo-version-broke-website/54426/13 "2025-05-05T19:20:54Z")

</div>

So it turns out the way I linked my stylesheets, images etc. is actually working fine if I **remove** the following lines from my `hugo.yaml`

```auto
disableLanguages:
  - de

```

With **both languages enabled, it now duplicates** the images, css and other folders into the /en/ and /de/ subdirectories as expected. Is it possible that hugo has issues with using multilingual mode but second language disabled, so effectively only one language is there? It seems to me there might be a bug, that causes the duplication in the language subdirectories to not happen in this case?

Anyhow, I have everything working perfectly now when both languages are enabled. The question is how can I get it to work with `de` disabled again (since the translation has not been finished yet and should only go live once everything is there)?