What causes "URLs with protocol (http*) not supported: %q. In page %q" in gohugoio/hugo?

Use a site-relative path: `url: /my/page/` — Hugo prefixes baseURL at render time.

URLs with protocol (http*) not supported: %q. In page %q

Error message

URLs with protocol (http*) not supported: %q. In page %q

What it means

The `url` front matter field sets a site-relative permalink for the page; Hugo rejects values starting with http:// or https:// because a fully-qualified external URL cannot be a page's output path within the site. The error includes the page path or title to locate the offending file.

Source

Thrown at hugolib/page__meta.go:722

			pcfg.Title = cast.ToString(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pcfg.Title
		case "linktitle":
			pcfg.LinkTitle = cast.ToString(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pcfg.LinkTitle
		case "summary":
			pcfg.Summary = cast.ToString(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pcfg.Summary
		case "description":
			pcfg.Description = cast.ToString(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pcfg.Description
		case "slug":
			// Don't start or end with a -
			pcfg.Slug = strings.Trim(cast.ToString(v), "-")
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pm.Slug()
		case "url":
			url := cast.ToString(v)
			if strings.HasPrefix(url, "http://") || strings.HasPrefix(url, "https://") {
				return fmt.Errorf("URLs with protocol (http*) not supported: %q. In page %q", url, ps.pathOrTitle())
			}
			pcfg.URL = url
			pcfg.Params[loki] = url
		case "type":
			pcfg.Type = cast.ToString(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pcfg.Type
		case "keywords":
			pcfg.Keywords = cast.ToStringSlice(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = pcfg.Keywords
		case "headless":
			// Legacy setting for leaf bundles.
			// This is since Hugo 0.63 handled in a more general way for all
			// pages.
			isHeadless := cast.ToBool(v)
			pcfg.Params[loki] = isHeadless
			if isHeadless {
				pm.pageConfig.Build.List = pagemeta.Never
				pm.pageConfig.Build.Render = pagemeta.Never

View on GitHub ↗ (pinned to 8a468df065)

Solutions

Use a site-relative path: `url: /my/page/` — Hugo prefixes baseURL at render time.
For external links in menus, define them in site config under menus with an external URL rather than as a content page.
For redirects to external sites, use an alias-free approach such as a layout with meta refresh or server-level redirects.

Example fix

# before
---
url: https://example.com/blog/my-post/
---
# after
---
url: /blog/my-post/
---

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Validate url front matter before build
if u, ok := fm["url"].(string); ok {
    if strings.HasPrefix(u, "http://") || strings.HasPrefix(u, "https://") {
        return fmt.Errorf("page url must be relative, got %q", u)
    }
}

Type guard

func isRelativeURL(u string) bool {
    return !strings.HasPrefix(strings.ToLower(u), "http")
}

Try / catch

if err := site.Build(); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "URLs with protocol") {
        // strip scheme+host; set only the path in the page's url field
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Use site-relative paths in a page's `url` front matter (`/blog/my-post/`), never absolute URLs
Set the site host via `baseURL` in the site config, not per-page
Grep content front matter for `url: http` in CI to catch this before builds fail

When it happens

Trigger: A content file's front matter contains `url: https://example.com/...`. Hit during page metadata processing (setMetaPost) for any build/serve.

Common situations: Users trying to make a menu entry or redirect to an external site via page `url`, migrating from other SSGs where url could be absolute, or accidentally pasting a full production URL including the domain instead of the path.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of gohugoio/hugo@8a468df065 (2026-07-31). Data as JSON: /data/errors/4b7e4842e585a587.json. Report an issue: GitHub ↗.