Publish a post and then hide/unlist it

Using Ghost
1

I would like to publish a post that is accessible by link but is hidden from the homepage. For my purposes a preview link does not work. I am already planning not to tag it.

Is this possible?

2

I was going to suggest using the preview link. If you publish the post, it /will/ show up in your sitemap (*), and search engines will find it. So if it is super secret, don’t publish.

(* actually, if you publish and set the post’s canonical URL to itself - accessible through metadata in the right site menu, below tags), it won’t appear in the sitemap.

Are you just trying to keep it off the front page, or does it really need to be a secret? If you just don’t want it on the front page, you may (depending a bit on the theme) be able to suppress it showing up there, using routes.yaml, or a small theme edit (the first works on Starter, the second does not). But it’s still likely to show up somewhere on the site (again, depending on theme). Probably on the author’s page. Probably in the sitemap (see trick above).

2 Likes
3

Can you elaborate on what you mean by setting the post’s canonical URL to itself? Do you mean setting it to be the same as the preview URL, or something else?

4

To the published post’s url, not the preview link.

5

Ah, I see. Perhaps that option is not available in Ghost(Pro)—although I do see that in the Google metadata section it does display the canonical URL, just grayed out.

So if I understand correctly: by default, the canonical URL is the preview URL, and the permalink is just the user-friendly thing which we can modify?

6

Definitely you can set the canonical URL on Ghost Pro, right in that grayed out area. Once you publish, the canonical url will be set to the post’s url, in terms of what Ghost serves to search engines. But that field will be blank. If you fill that field in, Ghost assumes that you’re directing traffic to another site, so it omits the post from the sitemap, even if what you’ve filled in that field is actually the post’s own url (starting with https). Bug or feature? Not clear.

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7

Oh, I see now. I had seen the grayed-out field and incorrectly assumed it was uneditable. Perhaps I should have clicked there first, ha!

1 Like
8

Maybe! Just remember that if you fill it in, the post will DISAPPEAR from your sitemap. This is usually not desirable behavior.

1 Like