Possible to "hide" a blog article?

[LauraB]

Hello,

Wondering if anyone knows of a way to "hide" a blog article so that it's only accessible if you have the link. We want to create a piece of content that's only viewable for a select group of customers for a limited time (sort of a sneak peek), and then make it public for everyone at a later date.

Any idea how we might be able to do this?

thanks!

[JulieHamel]

Hi @LauraB, hope you've been well!!

As far as I know, the only way would be to post the article to a seperate blog that is either:

• Permissioned to only be viewable by certain users - but you would need that list beforehand to give them access, and they would need to be logged in to view
• Hidden from lists (but your article could then be discovered via search)

And then once you are ready you could simply move the article to the public blog.

Alternatively, you could create a custom page, which can only be accessed via direct url. However that page is static so the downside is that users would not be able to comment or kudo.

I'd be very interested to hear if there are other work arounds through customizations, maybe the more dev inclined can enlighten us 🙂

Hope this helps!

[LauraB]

Thanks @JulieHamel! 

Maybe creating the hidden blog would work - and then I guess we'd be able to just move it to our regular blog after the sneak peek period was over and everyone would be able to see it..

thanks for the suggestion 🙂

[JulieHamel]

You're welcome @LauraB! 

I just came across a new setting in 15.6 that will be handy for the use case of a blog hidden from lists:

In Admin, under Discussion Styles > Posts and Discussions, make sure "Hide Messages From Hidden Nodes in Lists" is checked. This should keep your article from showing up in modules such as recent posts.

I wasn't aware of this setting before, hopefully it's useful information for others out there 🙂