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"Hidden" pages and category pages/tabs?

  1. michelleclough
    Member

    Hello, I'm having a few problems with the design of my website/blog. I'm trying to make a writing portfolio site of *mostly* static pages. The real site is under construction, but the test model is at http://mcloughtest.wordpress.com. I've tried to set it up so my questions make sense.

    My two problems:

    1) Is there a way to make a child page "hidden": - ie still public, but only accessible through direct link?

    My theme features dropdown menus for each tab that show the child pages for each parent (on my page, see: Blogs and Travel Articles tab). For the Travel Articles tab, I don't want the child pages to appear on the dropdown, I just want to be able to link to them (as seen in the parent page body here: http://mcloughtest.wordpress.com/travel-articles/). I just want to be able to have a list of static pages (ie my travel articles) without any dropdown or tab shenanigans. Can you give any pointers?

    2) I know how to have blog posts appear in a different tab, but is there a way to create a tab with a filtered category of posts?

    On my test site, I have a tab called "News" which is pretty much just the list of post (http://mcloughtest.wordpress.com/news/). However, I also have another tab, Geek Posts (http://mcloughtest.wordpress.com/geek-post/) which I would like to show all blog posts with the category (or tag) "geek". In a perfect world, I'd love to have the "News" tab filter out any "geek" tag/category posts too, but I'd settle for the "geek" tab working. I've poked around a bit and found a lot of stuff about category widgets, but that seems to be more sidebar stuff as opposed to top tab navigation. Any advice?

    Please let me know if you need more information (e.g. what I am trying to do) and I'll try to accommodate. Thank you in advance!

    The blog I need help with is mcloughtest.wordpress.com.

  2. timethief
    Member

    Are you trying to create what it in essence a page based structure that functions as a "mock website" with a static front page and no widgets in the sidebar? If so then that can be done.

    The consequences will be very little search engine attention, indexing and very little targeted traffic from search engines. This is because static pages which sit outside the blog structure are meant to be used for content that rarely if ever changes. They do not automatically update. Publishing pages and manually editing them to update them are non-events in the SEO world. And adding more content simply results in pages that are miles long and requires scrolling. Static pages do not appear in RSS feeds. Static page URLs lack dates and static pages cannot have Categories and tags assigned to them. Other bloggers do not tend to backlink to static pages.

    In other words, if you want to restructure your blog from being a post based structure to a page based structure then you will be making it extremely difficult for your blog to achieve any authority in it's niche and a PageRank.
    Please read > http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/

    I'm going to skip to 2. of your questions above. This is where you can change the front page (running page to posts) to another static page > Settings > Reading
    This is where you find instructions http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/

    After you reply to my question in the first paragraph above I will answer the rest of your questions.

  3. michelleclough
    Member

    Hi timethief! Thank you for the help.

    In essence, yes, I am trying to create a "mock website" with page based structure. The site I'm envisioning is not so much a blog, but rather a portfolio site with pages such as the following:

    - About Me
    - Portfolio (a page with lists of my published work)
    - Testimonials
    - Contact
    - News (this would be a "blog" of recent news, e.g. my latest publications, etc)
    - **** Unpublished Samples (this is where I would want to have a static page with links to static child pages, one for each unpublished article or what have you. The alternative would be to post the unpublished samples in the blog with an "Unpublished" tag or category, then have this tab show those posts)

    In regards to the SEO, it is a concern of mine, but I conceived of the website much more as a "static" portfolio than a blog. Yes, there will be updates (ie editing the static pages to reflect my published work, e.g. adding new articles to the list), but they would not really be "post" content. I was thinking something along the lines of this website: http://www.clairesowerbutt.com/ I acknowledge that the downside of this will be lack of search engine attention. Although the primary use of this website would be to refer potential clients to it, I would be all ears for suggestions on how to keep a decent search engine profile as well.

    In regards to number 2, I appreciate the pointer, but that wasn't quite my question. I'm pretty well set for setting the front page, and I've also found out how to run my posts to another "page". What I'm wondering is, can I filter those posts to a "page" based on a tag or category? For example, if I create a page titled, "Geeky Posts" and wanted all blog posts with the tag/category "geek" (and only those posts) to run on that page, is that possible?

    Thanks so much!

  4. timethief
    Member

    This is the format for a category feed on WordPress.com blogs:
    http://NAME_OF_BLOG.wordpress.com/category/categoryname/

    If you wish you can create a static page and then enter the link for the category into the tile field of the static page. This is a "trick" Panos discovered that does work in the Twenty Ten theme. Although it's unintended it will work. In that case the link would look like this >
    <a href="http://NAME_OF_BLOG.wordpress.com/category/categoryname/">category name </a>
    From > http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/page-tabs-as-external-links/

    `

  5. timethief
    Member

    OOPS! Ignore that "feed" word up there. It was a mistake.

  6. michelleclough
    Member

    Fantastic! It seems to be working at my test site. That helps a great deal, thank you. My current "real" website has a bunch of unpublished samples as blog posts, so in a pinch I can always just recategorize those and use this trick to have a tab/page devoted to them.

    Having said that, I still would like to know how to create child pages that do not appear on the Twenty Ten dropdown menu (but are otherwise public).

    Oh, by the way, this wasn't one of my original questions, but is there a way to customize different widgets appearing on different pages? I see that, for a page, you can choose between "default" and "one column no sidebar", but is there a way to, say, have the Twitter widget appear on the sidebar of the front page, the category widget appear on the Unpublished Sample page, etc?

    Thanks again for your help.

  7. timethief
    Member

    Having said that, I still would like to know how to create child pages that do not appear on the Twenty Ten dropdown menu (but are otherwise public).

    We can "hide" Pages
    Exclude Page IDs, separated by commas.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/pages-widget/

    Different widgets on different pages > No can do.

  8. michelleclough
    Member

    All right, I've got the Page Widget working as directed. Unfortunately, the dropdown menus for the top navigation tabs are still showing the child pages (ie when you mouseover "Travel Articles" at the top, it still drops down and shows Article 1 and Article 2). Is this just something that's part of this particular theme (ie just gotta live with it)?

  9. timethief
    Member

    I'm sorry but I believe you'll have to live with it or change to another theme. :( Currently, the Bueno, Enterprise (2 dropdown levels - Level 1 Pages & sub-pages - Level 2 - 10 Categories & sub-categories), iNove, Inuit Types, Monochrome, Neutra, Notepad, Sandbox 1.6.1, Structure, Twenty Ten, Titan and Vostok themes are the only ones that have dropdowns to child pages from parent pages in the top horizontal menu.

  10. timethief
    Member

    Drat! I clicked submit to soon. It's my understanding that the themes that do have drop-downs all behave in the same way.

  11. timethief
    Member

    I acknowledge that the downside of this will be lack of search engine attention. Although the primary use of this website would be to refer potential clients to it, I would be all ears for suggestions on how to keep a decent search engine profile as well.

    I can't offer any advice in this regard.

  12. timethief
    Member

    @michelle
    I just remembered this > http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/hide-pages/#hide-from-the-navigation-menu

  13. timethief
    Member

    Granted it won't be helpful if you stay with the theme you have, but I wanted to share it with you anyway in case you do change themes or get another blog and may want to use it.

  14. michelleclough
    Member

    Sorry for the delay in reply! Thanks so much for all your assistance. I'll find another solution for the child page issue (either using the category tab thing, or possibly just uploading the articles as Google Docs or something. I'll keep the support link in mind for if I switch to another theme.

    Many thanks for all your kind help!

  15. potassiumandrawrasaur
    Member

    Please post back here if you do find a solution, I am having the same issue :)

    Thanks

  16. timethief
    Member

    @potassiumandrawrasaur
    Are you joking or what? It seems you have either failed to read all that typing I did above or you failed to understand. Please state exactly what you need help with so we can provide it.

  17. adockett
    Member

    Thanks for all of this great information. Just one more question.

    Can you explain how you get posts to run onto another page other than the home page? And is there a way to determine by post which page it appears on? For example, I have one post that I want to appear on one page, but my next post I want on a different page, and so on. Can you do that?

  18. timethief
    Member

    @adockett
    Please post the URL for the blog in question if you want answer to your question. We provide support here only for wordpress.COM free hosted blogs. Answers to the same questions can be different if you are asking about a wordpress.ORG install.

    So if you have a free hosted wordpress.COM blog please post the complete and clickable URL for the blog in question starting with http://

    And if it proves that you have a wordpress.ORG install then you will need to post to http://wordpresss.ORG/support to get the correct answer for your software.

    If you don't know the differences then please read this sticky post at the head of the forum > http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/please-read-me-first-before-posting?replies=1

  19. adockett
    Member

    Thank you, we use WordPress.ORG. I will post a comment there.

  20. timethief
    Member

    @asocket
    You're welcome and best wishes with your wordpress.ORG install. :)

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