Layered Thoughts

Problem

Oftentimes when building out a CMS style Wordpress site, you’ll run into instances where you’ve added pages to your site that you don’t want to show up in the main navigation. This is especially true if you’re utilizing a drop down menu navigation system that can access your multi-level pages.

There are two ways to go about hiding these pages from your navigation menu. The 1st is to manually edit your menu code (most likely in your header.php file) to exclude individual pages by hand. While this work, it’s A) Clunky as hell and B) prone to breaking if a page is deleted and another one added, for instance.

Solution

Download and install a plugin called “Exclude Pages From Navigation“. What this plugin does is add a small context menu on the right sidebar of your edit and add new pages (seen on the right) that allows you to check off whether you want that page to show up in the automatically generated Wordpress menus.

By unchecking that box, you hide your page from showing up, allowing you to use that page for whatever you like without having to worry about people stumbling upon it through your menu system.

Related posts:

1. Disabling Automatic Post and Page Formatting in Wordpress Themes
2. Automatically Generate and Submit an XML Sitemap with Every Wordpress Post
3. Introducing ‘Make Wordpress Do What You Want’