'Home' menu item remains highlighted when on other single pages

[ColtonWeatherston]

I'm experiencing an issue where the "Home" menu item remains highlighted when navigated away from the home page (on other single pages).

I have menus.main specified in /hugo.toml.

[menus]
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'Home'
    pageRef = '/'
    weight = 10
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'About Me'
    pageRef = '/about-me'
    weight = 20
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'Projects'
    pageRef = '/projects'
    weight = 30
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'Contact Me'
    pageRef = '/contact-me'
    weight = 40

I did remove my menus keys and try the default menu (Home / Posts) to see if it was also affected. It doesn't appear to have this issue.

So it must be related to the manually specified menus keys. But I believe my syntax is correct?

Thanks!

Hugo version: 0.161.1
Paige version: 0.116.0

[willfaught]

Try using url instead of pageRef. I’m AFK for a week, unfortunately.

[ColtonWeatherston]

Gave it a try and it didn't resolve it. All good!

[willfaught]

Sorry about that. I’ll take a look when I get back.

[willfaught]

@ColtonWeatherston Sorry for the delay. I came down with a cold after my trip. I can't seem to reproduce what you're seeing.

When I make this patch to the Paige repo:

diff --git a/example/hugo.toml b/example/hugo.toml
index cdd7bdad..5a4d7ed6 100644
--- a/example/hugo.toml
+++ b/example/hugo.toml
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@ isFamilyFriendly = true
 [params.paige.site]
 disable_breadcrumbs = true
 disable_credit = true
+menu_style = "underline"
 
 [params.paige.subpages]
 disable_authors = true
@@ -77,3 +78,22 @@ author = "authors"
 category = "categories"
 series = "series"
 tag = "tags"
+
+[menus]
+  [[menus.main]]
+    name = 'Home'
+    pageRef = '/'
+    weight = 10
+  [[menus.main]]
+    name = 'Content'
+    pageRef = '/content'
+    weight = 20
+  [[menus.main]]
+    name = 'Shortcodes'
+    pageRef = '/shortcodes'
+    weight = 30
+  [[menus.main]]
+    name = 'Layouts'
+    pageRef = '/layouts'
+    weight = 40
+

I see this:

Can you paste your full hugo.toml and your site's directory/file structure?

[willfaught]

Also try cleaning your public/ directory to avoid any caching bugs from Hugo and reopen the browser tab, just in case.

[ColtonWeatherston]

All good!

Huh interesting. Here's my hugo.toml file:

title = 'Colton Weatherston'
baseURL = 'https://coltonw.ca'
locale = 'en-us'

[markup.highlight]
noclasses = false
style = "github"

[markup.goldmark.renderer]
unsafe = true

[[module.imports]]
path = "github.com/willfaught/paige"

[params.paige.site]
description = 'A self-motivated, diligent, and efficient full stack developer.'
credit = 'Copyright © 2026 - Colton Weatherston'
disable_breadcrumbs = true
menu_style = "underline"

[params.social]
  linkedin = 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/colton-w'
  github = 'https://github.com/ColtonWeatherston'

[menus]
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'Home'
    pageRef = '/'
    weight = 10
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'About Me'
    pageRef = '/about-me'
    weight = 20
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'Projects'
    pageRef = '/projects'
    weight = 30
  [[menus.main]]
    name = 'Contact Me'
    pageRef = '/contact-me'
    weight = 40

This is my directory structure:

I did clean my public/ directory, to no avail.

[willfaught]

There may be an issue with your file structure. There was a breaking change in Hugo regarding layout templates:

https://gohugo.io/templates/new-templatesystem-overview/

layouts/_default was removed:

Description	Action required
The _default folder is removed.	Move all files in layouts/_default up to the layouts/ root.

So e.g. layouts/_default/about.html should be at layouts/about.html.

Perhaps that's causing an issue here?

If not, is your code in a repo I can use to debug?

[ColtonWeatherston]

Huh, I didn't know about that change! Surprised I didn't get any kind of warning when building the site. Anyways, I moved my layout templates from _default/ into the layouts/ root directory, but it didn't resolve the issue.

The site is in a private repo, though I have given you access to it. The relevant code will be in the "update" branch.

Thanks!