Working in the app
Site health
Get a practical read on broken links, missing alt text, large images, old configuration and content gaps.
Last updated
Site Health scans the built site and content for quality and maintenance issues. It reports findings but does not block publishing.
Open it with ⇧⌘H, from the Dashboard’s health card, from the Config page or the View menu.
Build the site first
Health scans your site’s public/ folder, not your content. Links are checked against the pages Hugo actually produced, and the page count is the number of HTML files it wrote.
Build the site in the current session before using the score.
What it checks
Nine checks run in parallel. Missing title, date and draft fields are reported separately, which produces the eleven rows below.
| Check | Severity | What it looks at |
|---|---|---|
| Broken internal links | Error | Every internal link in public/ that points at a page Hugo didn’t build |
| Images without alt text | Warning | Markdown images in content/ with an empty alt |
| Large images | Warning | Anything over 500 KB in static/ or assets/ |
| Deprecated config keys | Warning | Config keys Hugo has since renamed or dropped |
| No favicon | Warning | No favicon found in the built site |
| Build time regression | Warning | The latest build measured against the average of your recent builds |
Missing title in front matter | Warning | Aggregated: one issue with a count and an example file |
Missing date in front matter | Info | Aggregated the same way |
Missing draft flag | Info | Aggregated the same way |
| High draft ratio | Info | A large share of your content is still draft: true |
| Stale search index | Info | A Pagefind index older than the pages it’s supposed to cover |
Each missing front matter field produces one issue with a count and example file.
Every issue is tagged CONTENT, PERF, A11Y or CONFIG, so a long list still sorts into something you can act on.
How the score works
The score starts at 100 and each issue takes points off:
| Severity | Cost |
|---|---|
| Error | 10 |
| Warning | 5 |
| Info | 2 |
It can’t go below zero. The Dashboard’s health card colours the last score green at 80 or above, then amber, then red.
The score is a summary of the current findings. Informational issues still reduce it even when you choose not to act on them.
What it measures
Alongside the issues, health reports four numbers about the built site: build time (the last one), page count, assets size (everything in public/) and search index size, if the site has a Pagefind index.
It doesn’t fix anything
Site Health does not change files. The report is regenerated for each scan and is not stored between sessions.