There are many reasons why you would want to create a hidden page in Joomla but unfortunately within the Joomla administration there are no simple ways of figuring it out. Learn why you may want to create a hidden page in Joomla and how to easily create links to those pages.
The main reason you may wish to create a hidden page in Joomla is for subscriber thank you pages that work along your mailing list provider software. When you set up your mailing list, whether it is with Aweber, Constant Contact, GetResponse or any other mailing list provider, you will want to customize certain pages with the look and feel of your website rather that using the mailing list default pages. This will give your mailing list sign up process a more professional and streamline look and feel to it.
Another reason may be that you are holding a special event just for your subscribers or are offering extra discounts for your joint venture partners and want to create a hidden page that your normal website visitors can not find. Having a hidden page, so long as you do not link to it from any other source apart from an email, will mean that the search engines will not pick up the hidden page either.
No matter what the reason, creating a hidden page in Joomla is very simple to set up.
The first thing you need to do when creating your hidden page is to create a new article in your Joomla Article Manager. Put whatever information you want those who land on your page to see and once you are finished, save it. Once you have saved it and your screen should now be showing a list of all the articles you have written. Find your newly written article and check the article id number which will appear on the far right hand side column under the column heading ID. Take a note of this number.
Next you need to go to your menu manager and create a new menu called "hidden". It is easier to set it up like this so that you can keep track of all your hidden pages. Once you have set up your hidden menu, you need to link the article you have just written to a new menu item within this newly created hidden menu. After attaching the article to a menu item, take down the id number of the menu item as you will need this later. It will appear on the far right hand column under the column heading ItemID.
Finally, the piece of code that you need to help your visitors find this page is:
youdomain.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=xx&Itemid=yy
Replace the xx of the article & id with the id number of the article you have written (ID) and replace the yy of the Itemid with the menu id number (ItemID). It is always a good idea to test that it has worked by placing the completed code into your browser.
Remember to keep this piece of code in a safe place for the next time you want to create a hidden page.