Most themes are incompatible with Hugo 0.12?

Hi! I’m getting started with Hugo (v0.12), and looking for a theme I can live with. I’ve installed all of the themes from the hugoThemes repo as per the QuickStart, and tried them all out.

Unfortunately most of the themes don’t work — they cause the server to spew some errors on startup, and the output HTML is mangled or missing.

I’m guessing the problem is that the APIs used by themes have changed and a lot of the themes haven’t been updated to match yet. Is there a plan to fix them? Or is there an alternate source of working themes?

For example, here are the errors I get trying to use the “journal” theme:

$ hugo server --theme=journal --buildDrafts --watch
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Unable to render [post/theme/post/post-title.html _default/theme/post/post-title.html theme/post/theme/post/post-title.html theme/_default/theme/post/post-title.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Expecting to find a template in either the theme/layouts or /layouts in one of the following relative locations [post/theme/post/post-title.html _default/theme/post/post-title.html theme/post/theme/post/post-title.html theme/_default/theme/post/post-title.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Unable to render [page/theme/post/post-title.html _default/theme/post/post-title.html theme/page/theme/post/post-title.html theme/_default/theme/post/post-title.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Expecting to find a template in either the theme/layouts or /layouts in one of the following relative locations [page/theme/post/post-title.html _default/theme/post/post-title.html theme/page/theme/post/post-title.html theme/_default/theme/post/post-title.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Unable to render [post/theme/post/frontpage-post.html _default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/post/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/_default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Expecting to find a template in either the theme/layouts or /layouts in one of the following relative locations [post/theme/post/frontpage-post.html _default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/post/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/_default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Unable to render [page/theme/post/frontpage-post.html _default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/page/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/_default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html]
ERROR: 2015/01/08 Expecting to find a template in either the theme/layouts or /layouts in one of the following relative locations [page/theme/post/frontpage-post.html _default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/page/theme/post/frontpage-post.html theme/_default/theme/post/frontpage-post.html]

have you tried this one? I just tried it yesterday with V.12 and it rendered.

https://github.com/tmaiaroto/hugo-redlounge

I’m working on zurb-foundation based theme (it’s actually a complete site you can quickstart from) but it won’t be ready for a month or more.

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Yes, that’s one of the ones that works. (I didn’t say they were all broken, just the majority of them.) I’ve settled on herring-cove for the time being.

Maybe the non-working themes should be removed (as submodules) from the hugoThemes repo until they’re fixed? That would make for a better new-user experience.

I don’t think they should be removed necessarily. We just need a better process around this. Themes should document their compatible version. Hugo should read that and issue a warning if it’s not compatible, not list it in hugo list, etc.

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Aha! So that’s why I couldn’t get most of these themes to work.

Version compatibility will be very appreciated.

See:

Pull request welcomed.

Yeah I’m seeing the same thing. Very discouraging for new users. I think at the very least the quick start guide should be updated to use a theme that works. hyde is currently broken.

I suggest angels-ladder, it works and it’s very good looking.

@octalmage The Hyde theme shouldn’t be broken anymore. The PRs, that make the theme compatible with newer versions of Hugo (see .BaseUrl vs .BaseURL), have been merged yesterday.

Weird, I just cloned and tried and it’s still throwing errors.

These were merged into the spf13/hugoThemes repo? I’m not seeing the PR.

It’s possible that spf13/hugoThemes hasn’t been updated so far. You can see the PRs in the original repo. Consider to clone from there (until the spf13/hugoThemes will be updated).

The hugoThemes repo is up to date.