Hide Pages (Unpublishing)
This friendly guide introduces you to "Unpublishing," the best way to hide content from your visitors without deleting it. It helps beginners understand how to take a page offline for maintenance or seasonal updates while keeping all the hard work safe in the Backoffice. You'll gain the basics of toggling page visibility with just two clicks.
The "Unpublished" State
In Umbraco 17+, a page can exist in your content tree but remain invisible to the world. When you hide a page, its status changes from a green "Published" checkmark to a gray "Unpublished" icon. This acts as a draft mode; your text, images, and uSkinned components stay exactly where they are, allowing you to edit them privately until you are ready to go live again.
Why Hide Instead of Delete?
Before jumping to the delete button, consider if the content is seasonal. For example, a "Christmas Sale" page can be hidden in January and brought back next December simply by republishing it. This foundation saves you from rebuilding layouts and allows you to keep your SEO settings intact for future use. Start by checking your page status in the Info tab to see if a page is currently visible to your audience.
For a visual walkthrough of managing content and the backoffice interface in Umbraco 17+, you can refer to the official Umbraco HQ overview:
Note: This video covers the latest features and interface updates relevant to the v17+ environment.
Other Related Tutorials
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[Tutorial] Publishing vs. Unpublishing (Official Docs)
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[Tutorial] Scheduling Content to Hide Automatically
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[Tutorial] Managing Draft Versions
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[Tutorial] Previewing Hidden Pages
Action Steps to Hide a Page
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Select the Page: In the Content tab, click on the page you wish to hide.
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Open Publish Options: Look at the bottom right of the editor. Click the arrow icon next to the "Save and Publish" button.
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Choose Unpublish: Select the Unpublish option from the pop-up menu.
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Confirm: A prompt will appear asking if you want to unpublish the page (and optionally all of its sub-pages). Click Confirm.
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Verify: Look at the page name in the left-hand tree; it should now appear slightly grayed out with an "Unpublished" label.
Pro-Tip: If you want to see what your hidden page looks like before making it live again, click the Preview button at the top of the page. This allows you to view the site as if the page were live, but only for you!
Where Next?
Now that you can "Hide Pages" to manage your site's timeline, how do you handle a growing amount of content?
As you add more information, a flat list of pages becomes difficult for your visitors to navigate. To keep your website professional and organized, you need to start nesting your content logically. Your next step is learning how to "Create Subpages".
We’ll show you how to build a "Parent and Child" relationship between pages, which automatically creates organized dropdown menus and clear paths for your users to follow!