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Possible to see child pages without linking to them?

  1. carocat
    Member

    Wasn't too sure about the thread title so please bear with me. :)

    I want to create several childpages [sort of a portfolio] on my blog which I don't want to be accessible for everyone, just people I give the link to. For simplicity that rules out private pages.

    So my question is, without having the link to them and provided someone doesn't guess it, is it possible to see those childpages in any way on the blog? I don't have the pages widget [nor do I intend to in the future].

    Also, considering I'm not going to post the link anywhere publicly does that also mean it's completely cut off from search engines?

    Just to clarify, it's not going to be some highly private content, just a portfolio that I don't want to make accessible to everyone who visits my blog.

  2. hanni
    Happiness Engineer

    Unless you hide you entire blog from search engines your pages will, inevitably, at some point be spidered and indexed.

    As far as I'm aware, no, without guessing the URL the child pages would not be visible.

  3. carocat
    Member

    Hi hanni,

    how would they get indexed if there's no link to them?

  4. cjwriter
    Member

    I'm not sure how the pages get indexed if there's no link but it's happened to me. I had a photo page I just wanted to show family and friends, so I set it up as a child page which wasn't linked anywhere on the blog. But people still found it off Google and the image url. It drove me nuts. :)

    If you want the portfolio to be more private, I think the only way is to set up a new blog for your portfolio and set the privacy option to block search engines but allow normal visitors.

  5. hanni
    Happiness Engineer

    carocat: directory sniffing at a guess.

  6. mark
    Staff

    Also, we sometimes get people posting to the forums saying that WordPress broke their privacy, that we put them in Google, that we should not be trusted because when they google their name their blog here is the first result and it was a secret etc etc.
    And what it actually was that a friend of their's put them in a blogroll. Not our fault and Google follows every single link.

    So it would take one person to link once, or to pass the link to someone else - and the pages get indexed.

  7. carocat
    Member

    Yeah, I can imagine, cj.

    Thanks to both of you.

    So another question, say I've got blog 2 which is exclusively my portfolio and blocks searchengines and I only pass the link on privately. If that includes a link to my main blog would there be some backwards crawling and searchengines be able to track it down?

  8. carocat
    Member

    Didn't see your post, Mark.

    I've seen those threads before and yeah, I guess that's always something I have to remember..

  9. mark
    Staff

    There is another - referrers. If someone is reading your private page and clicks on a link to another blog here - or anywhere in the blogroll - it could show up.

    With the links, any link will be followed by Google.

    And while we try to block search engines we cannot guarantee it - they can change what they do any time they want.
    Password protection is the best way to go.

    If it's on the net though, you have to be prepared in case someone does find it.

  10. carocat
    Member

    Thank you very much for your help. :)

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