There always comes a time when I’m writing that I don’t want it to appear on the front page of my blog or go out via my RSS feeds. Today I’m going to share a couple of free plugins and tips I have used for years that make it super easy to publish new content, but publish it quietly without anyone knowing.
Why hide posts?
Here are a couple of reasons why I sometimes don’t want things to show or go out via my RSS feeds:
- I’m writing an article specifically for SEO purposes that I know Google will probably enjoy more than my readers would. And yes, there can be a big difference.
- Sometimes I write articles for fun that might lean a little too far outside the site’s target demographic.
- On some sites, I have automatic triggers based on my RSS feeds. I don’t always want these firing on every new post.
- I don’t want something notifying external services of my publication. Typically this is due to social media automation I have hooked up.
- Perhaps you want to start compiling a public list, but are not proud of your content yet. Hiding something from WordPress search can be handy.
How to hide WordPress posts
This is where the free WordPress Hide Posts plugin comes in handy. It has a 5-star rating and works great with the new Gutenberg block editor.
You can download it from the WordPress repository or by searching for it within your WordPress dashboard under “Add New” plugins. Once installed simply browse to a post that you want to hide, and choose from the following options:
- Hide on frontpage (I typically use this one)
- Hide on categories
- Hide on search
- Hide on tags page
- Hide on authors page
- Hide in RSS feed (another handy one)
- Hide on blog page
Then hit “Publish.” And that’s it! Your post will start getting crawled by Google, but nobody browsing your site will know about it.
It also supports custom posts types, such as pages and even WooCommerce products. You can enable other post types in the “WordPress Hide Posts” settings.
Hopefully, this short and quick post on how to hide WordPress posts from the front page was helpful. Let me know below in the comments.