Sometimes you don't want a page to be listed along with all of the other pages on your site. For example, a “Thank You” webpage appears when someone has filled out a form but you don’t want that page to show up in navigation, site map, or search results.
What are you really doing?
Lets understand what you're doing: using these exclusions to hide Pages only keeps them from being included in various listings. The Pages are still completely available to anyone in the world with the address to the Page. For example:
- a bookmark
- a link in an email
- a link on another site
- a link in the body of a page on your site
- browser history
In other words, you're not putting the Page behind a locked door, you're simply putting it behind a curtain.
WARNING: Do not put sensitive information (like Social Security Numbers or credit card numbers) on webpages and then hide them using this feature! In fact, never put such information on a webpage. WebSanity will not be responsible if you accidentally expose sensitive data due to mistakes or mis-use.
Ways to hide Pages
With that understanding, there are several ways to keep it from being listed:
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Exclude From Nav keeps the page from being included in the site's navigation.
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Exclude From Site Map helps keep your site map from becoming bloated.
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Exclude From Page List omits pages from being listed by the Page List Block.
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Exclude From Search Engine Reporting keeps a page from being included in the report made to Google and other search engines when a page is created. Note that the page will still be included in search engine results if there are publicly available links to it.
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Exclude From Dashboard Search keeps a page from showing up in the Dashboard when Editors perform searches there. It's unusual to want this!
Steps for hiding a Page
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Go to the Page you want to hide.
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Hover over Edit and press Properties.
The Page Properties panel will open.
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Click on the Custom Attributes tab.
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Select the Exclusions you want.
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Press Save.