A typical use case for a hidden page might be so you can store your website licensing agreement or image attribution links without having it explicitly in the main navigation links – most folk link to their licensing agreement in the footer.
If you want to have a page on your self-hosted WordPress website that is accessible via a URL but not directly linked or advertised on the site, you have several options:
- Use a plugin such as “Exclude Pages“.
- If your pages are displayed via a sidebar widget, you can go to the widget settings page in the WordPress admin section and use the “exclude” field to hide a page ID.
- Save the page as a “draft” but never publish it. Even though it’s not live, you can still access the page if you type the direct URL to the page. e.g. http://yourblogurl/?page_id=69.
- Modify the wp_list_pages function in your current theme:
- If you know you don’t use any sub-pages on your site, you can hide any page you want by making it a sub-page of the homepage and then display your menu using:
<?php wp_list_pages('depth=1'); ?> - To exclude a page with id 69, use:
<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=69' ); ?>If you do this you can automatically hide additional pages by making them a sub-page of the hidden page.
- If you know you don’t use any sub-pages on your site, you can hide any page you want by making it a sub-page of the homepage and then display your menu using:
- Create a new file in the theme directory. It will be accessible via http://yourblogurl/wp-content/themes/yourthemename/yoursecretpage.php. If you want to use regular wordpress functions in the secret page, include the following on line 1:
<?php require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../../wp-blog-header.php'); ?>
Note: WordPress does have a “Private” checkbox that you can tick in the visibility section of the publish options. However, private pages will not be accessible via any URL.
