Link cards
A bare URL on its own line in article content is rendered as a rich link
preview card instead of a plain link. The theme reads the target page’s Open
Graph tags at build time (via Hugo’s resources.GetRemote) and shows its
image, title, description, and site name.
This works out of the box — link previews are always on by default. There is nothing to enable.
Put a URL on its own line:
https://gohugo.io/Or insert one explicitly with the ogp shortcode:
{{< ogp "https://gohugo.io/" >}}Both render the same card.
What becomes a card
Section titled “What becomes a card”Only a bare, standalone URL (an autolink whose visible text equals the destination) becomes a card. Everything else is left untouched:
[Hugo](https://gohugo.io/)— a labelled link stays an ordinary link.- Relative and internal links, anchors, and
mailto:links are unchanged.
Metadata and fallbacks
Section titled “Metadata and fallbacks”The card is built from the target’s <head>:
| Field | Source | Fallback |
|---|---|---|
| Title | og:title |
<title> |
| Description | og:description |
<meta name="description"> |
| Image | og:image |
omitted if absent |
| Site name | og:site_name |
the URL’s host |
Relative og:image URLs (/cover.png, //cdn/…) are resolved against the
target. HTML entities in the title and description are decoded.
If the target exposes no usable Open Graph data, or is unreachable at build time, the URL falls back to a plain link — a build is never broken by a missing preview. Each unique URL is fetched once per build (results are cached).
Disabling it
Section titled “Disabling it”Link previews are on by default. To turn them off site-wide — falling back to
plain links everywhere — set params.ogpCard.enabled
to false:
[params.ogpCard]enabled = false- Card images are loaded lazily (
loading="lazy") and are served from the target’s own host — the browser fetches them at view time. - Because previews are fetched during
hugo build, the build host needs outbound network access to the URLs you link. In restricted CI, unreachable targets simply fall back to plain links. - This is separate from OG images, which control how your own pages preview when shared elsewhere.