diff --git a/exampleSite/config.toml b/exampleSite/config.toml
index 83a6643529..9736267e36 100644
--- a/exampleSite/config.toml
+++ b/exampleSite/config.toml
@@ -1,15 +1,20 @@
 # this is a required setting for this theme to appear on https://themes.gohugo.io/
-# change this to a value appropriate for you
-baseURL = "https://example.com"
+# change this to a value appropriate for you; if your site is served from a subdirectory
+# set it like "https://example.com/mysite/"
+baseURL = "https://example.com/"
 
-# as the official Hugo documentation recommends, we turn this off for this
-# showcase; this allows the published site to be served by both http and https
-canonifyURLs = false # true -> all relative URLs would instead be canonicalized using baseURL
-
-# required for this documentation to be served from subfolder
-relativeURLs = false # true -> rewrite all relative URLs to be relative to the current content
-
-# if you set uglyURLs to true, don't forget to set it also in the [params] section
+# canonicalization will only be used for the sitemap.xml and index.xml files;
+# if set to false, a site served from a subdirectory will generate wrong links
+# inside of the above mentioned files; if you serve the page from the servers root
+# you are free to set the value to false as recommended by the official Hugo documentation
+canonifyURLs = true # true -> all relative URLs would instead be canonicalized using baseURL
+# required value to serve this page from a webserver AND the file system;
+# if you don't want to serve your page from the file system, you can also set this value
+# to false
+relativeURLs = true # true -> rewrite all relative URLs to be relative to the current content
+# if you set uglyURLs to false, this theme will append 'index.html' to any branch bundle link
+# so your page can be also served from the file system; if you don't want that,
+# set disableExplicitIndexURLs=true in the [params] section
 uglyURLs = false     # true -> basic/index.html -> basic.html
 
 # the directory where Hugo reads the themes from; this is specific to your
@@ -32,7 +37,6 @@ title = "Hugo Relearn Documentation"
 # settings specific to this theme's features; choose to your likings and
 # consult this documentation for explaination
 [params]
-  uglyURLs = false # see uglyURLs setting above
   editURL = "https://github.com/McShelby/hugo-theme-relearn/edit/main/exampleSite/content/"
   description = "Documentation for Hugo Relearn Theme"
   author = "Sören Weber"
diff --git a/exampleSite/content/basics/configuration/_index.en.md b/exampleSite/content/basics/configuration/_index.en.md
index 404c85255b..02a62663e5 100644
--- a/exampleSite/content/basics/configuration/_index.en.md
+++ b/exampleSite/content/basics/configuration/_index.en.md
@@ -80,17 +80,19 @@ Note that some of these parameters are explained in details in other sections of
   collapsibleMenu = false
   # If a single page can contain content in multiple languages, add those here
   additionalContentLanguage = [ "en" ]
-  # Must be set to the same value as the global uglyURLs setting; this adds 'index.html' to all home links if set to true
-  uglyURLs = false
+  # If set to true, no index.html will be appended to prettyURLs; this will cause pages not
+  # to be servable from the file system
+  disableExplicitIndexURLs = false
 ```
 
 ## Serving your page from a subfolder
 
-The theme runs best if your site is installed in the root of your webserver. If your site is served from a subfolder, eg. `https://example.com/mysite/`, you have to set the following lines to your `config.toml`
+If your site is served from a subfolder, eg. `https://example.com/mysite/`, you have to set the following lines to your `config.toml`
 
 ````toml
 baseURL = "https://example.com/mysite/"
 canonifyURLs = true
+relativeURLs = true
 ````
 
 Without `canonifyURLs=true` URLs in sublemental pages (like `sitemap.xml`, `rss.xml`) will be generated falsly while your HTML files will still work. See https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/5226.
@@ -101,15 +103,17 @@ If you want your page served from the filesystem by using URLs starting with `fi
 
 ````toml
 relativeURLs = true
-uglyURLs = true
-[params]
-  uglyURLs = true
 ````
 
-Because the global `uglyURLs` setting is not queryable in the theme's code, you'll have to set this option also in the `[params]` section of your `config.toml`.
+The theme will append an additional `index.html` to all branch bundle links by default to make the page be servable from the file system. If you don't care about the file system and only serve your page via a webserver you can also generate the links without this change by adding this to your `config.toml`
+
+````toml
+[params]
+  disableExplicitIndexURLs = true
+````
 
 {{% notice note %}}
-If you want to use the search feature with an existing installation make sure to change your outputformat for the homepage from the now deprecated `JSON` to `SEARCH` [as seen below](#activate-search).
+If you want to use the search feature from the file system using an older installation of the theme make sure to change your outputformat for the homepage from the now deprecated `JSON` to `SEARCH` [as seen below](#activate-search).
 {{% /notice %}}
 
 ## Activate search
diff --git a/layouts/partials/relLangPrettyUglyURL.hugo b/layouts/partials/relLangPrettyUglyURL.hugo
index 6d79bdb942..43b656db2c 100644
--- a/layouts/partials/relLangPrettyUglyURL.hugo
+++ b/layouts/partials/relLangPrettyUglyURL.hugo
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {{- $page := .page }}
 {{- $to := .to }}
 {{- $link := $to.RelPermalink }}
-{{- if and .page.Site.Params.uglyURLs (eq (substr $link -1) "/") }}
+{{- if and (ne .page.Site.Params.disableExplicitIndexURLs true) (eq (substr $link -1) "/") }}
 	{{- $link = printf "%sindex.html" $link }}
 {{- end }}
 {{- $link }}
\ No newline at end of file