Issue with CSS Not Loading for a Hugo Website Deployed with GitHub Pages

Deploying a Hugo website on GitHub Pages is a seamless process, thanks to the comprehensive documentation provided here. However, I recently encountered an issue where my Hugo website launched successfully but failed to load the CSS.

The Problem

Upon checking the developer console, I noticed the following error:

https://namanattri.dev/namanattri.dev/ananke/css/main.min.css 404

It was clear that the path to the CSS was incorrect. The generated HTML included the following line:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/namanattri.dev/ananke/css/main.min.css">

The base path namanattri.dev was being prepended to the theme CSS path incorrectly. The correct URL should have been:

https://namanattri.dev/ananke/css/main.min.css

This would correspond to the following HTML:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/ananke/css/main.min.css">

Investigating the Issue

The config.toml file already had the correct baseURL set:

baseURL = 'https://namanattri.dev/'
languageCode = 'en-us'
title = 'Naman Attri'
theme = 'ananke'

Upon further investigation, I realized the GitHub workflow file suggested by the documentation was passing --baseURL "${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_url }}/" to the Hugo command:

run: |
  hugo \
    --gc \
    --minify \
    --baseURL "${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_url }}/"

This was causing the baseURL to be appended incorrectly.

The Solution

Removing --baseURL "${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_url }}/" from the workflow file fixed the issue. Here is the corrected workflow file:

# Sample workflow for building and deploying a Hugo site to GitHub Pages
name: Deploy Hugo site to Pages

on:
  # Runs on pushes targeting the default branch
  push:
    branches:
      - main

  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

# Sets permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

# Allow only one concurrent deployment, skipping runs queued between the run in-progress and latest queued.
# However, do NOT cancel in-progress runs as we want to allow these production deployments to complete.
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false

# Default to bash
defaults:
  run:
    shell: bash

jobs:
  # Build job
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      HUGO_VERSION: 0.128.0
    steps:
      - name: Install Hugo CLI
        run: |
          wget -O ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo.deb https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v${HUGO_VERSION}/hugo_extended_${HUGO_VERSION}_linux-amd64.deb \
          && sudo dpkg -i ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo.deb                    
      - name: Install Dart Sass
        run: sudo snap install dart-sass
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          submodules: recursive
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Setup Pages
        id: pages
        uses: actions/configure-pages@v5
      - name: Install Node.js dependencies
        run: "[[ -f package-lock.json || -f npm-shrinkwrap.json ]] && npm ci || true"
      - name: Build with Hugo
        env:
          HUGO_CACHEDIR: ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo_cache
          HUGO_ENVIRONMENT: production
          TZ: America/Los_Angeles
        run: |
          hugo \
            --gc \
            --minify                   
      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: ./public

  # Deployment job
  deploy:
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: build
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

After making this change, the website’s CSS loaded correctly, and the site appeared as expected.

Conclusion

If you’re encountering a similar issue with CSS not loading for your Hugo site on GitHub Pages, check the --baseURL parameter in your workflow file. Removing it might resolve the path issues for your static assets. Happy coding!