More often that not, I need to hide pages from the menu and search pages, when setting up a Wordpress blog.
Usually for download and thank-you pages, or other stuff that is only accessible via a direct link.
By default, Wordpress includes a visibility settings, which has 3 values.
- Public – anyone can see it.
- Protected – Anyone with the password can see it.
- Private – Only you can see it
None of them is useful for my goals, however, some digging revealed that a small change would allow you to link directly to password protected pages.
Copy wp-pass.php to unlock.php, and make the changes below.
--- wp-pass.php 2011-09-19 05:17:26.000000000 +0200
+++ unlock.php 2012-01-02 17:38:47.000000000 +0100
@@ -10,8 +10,8 @@
require( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php');
// 10 days
-setcookie('wp-postpass_' . COOKIEHASH, stripslashes( $_POST['post_password'] ), time() + 864000, COOKIEPATH);
+setcookie('wp-postpass_' . COOKIEHASH, stripslashes( $_GET['post_password'] ), time() + 864000, COOKIEPATH);
-wp_safe_redirect(wp_get_referer());
+wp_safe_redirect($_GET['return']);
exit;
?>Now you can simply link to http://example.com/unlock.php?post_password=foobar&return=/thank-you/
