Hyperlink to completely hidden articles

[ma_schmidt_de]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if it is possible to publish an article that is completely hidden and can only be access via a navto link. By completely hidden I mean the user has no other change then using the hyperlink to get to the page, e.g. neither accessible via browsing the page of a collection nor swiping between articles will bring up the hidden article.

My first approach was to not assign the hidden article to a collection but publish it. Then I added another article, assigned it to the top-level-collection and in the article provided two navto links in the form:

- navto://[articlename]

- navto://article/[articlename]

I tested this and when I followed the link it loaded up a blank page. See screenshot below:

The page contains the actual title of the hidden article ("Settings (tc)") but comes up with an error saying the app failed to download the content ("Download fehlgeschlagen").

Is this the right way to do it and am I doing something wrong?

Or is there a better way to do it?
(Still assume it can be done though.)

Thanks a lot in advance.

Cheers,

Matthias

[Bob_Bringhurst_]

You need to add the article to a collection. If you select the "Hide from Browse Page" option in article properties, do you get the results you want?

[ma_schmidt_de]

Hi Bob,

unfortunately, I don't. Using the "Hide from Browse Page" makes the article still available via swipe. I don't consider this completely hidden, as the user can stumble upon it by accident.

We basically aim to show the hidden article only if the user triggers a certain action (link) on another article.

Is this possible? Do articles not added to a collection even get published properly?

Cheers,

Matthias

[NMarroquin]

You are doing it correctly. You should be able to publish an article without adding it to any collection, then use the navTo as you suggested. Internally we call these "orphaned" articles.

If the app is failing to download the article in this context there may be some failure with the publish process or in the viewer. I did a very quick test with these conditions in my preflight app and it worked. Could you try unpublishing and publishing the article?

[Bob_Bringhurst_ · Accepted solution]

Hi Mattias,

I tested this a few months ago. If I recall, an article must be part of a collection in order to work properly—this might be a bug—but I don't think that collection needs to be part of the app structure.

Try adding the article to a published collection, but don't add the collection to your structure. That way, users can't swipe to it, and you should be able to link to the article.

Let us know if that works.

-Bob

[ma_schmidt_de]

Hi Nathan, Hi Bob,

thanks for sharing your thoughts. You're both right.

I unpublished, republished and tested both: an orphaned article and an article within a "orphaned collection" that is not part of the app structure.

On Preflight: Linking to both articles works fine.

On Android app: I still get the "download failed" error for pure orphaned articles. But linking to the article within the orphaned collection works like a charm.

You might consider the download failed error of orphaned articles a bug. But I'd say, we are fine with adding all hidden articles to a hidden collection.

As the "article within orphaned collection" approach works on both preflight and Android I have to give this one to Bob.

Thanks again, guys!

Matthias

P.S. Last question though - I didn't try it yet. Are both articles in my example going to be out of scope of the search facility?

[Bob_Bringhurst_]

Hi Mattias,

Glad you got the orphaned collection technique to work.

Regarding search, yes, the orphan articles will still show up. I tested this. (A workaround is to use blank or nonsense metadata for those articles to avoid search hits.)

Bob

[ma_schmidt_de]

Hi Bob,

thanks. We keep that in mind.

Cheers,

Matthias