How do I build a Page but prevent it from Publishing?

[Acorn]

I have a modest site of 30 pages. I want to develop new content that is not immediately accessible. I am using Previous/Next buttons with <Next page> & <Previous page> as a Repeat on all Pages.
If someone knew the page name, they might manually access it through its URL; I not mind this discovery, in this instance, but generally preventing viewing may be the best.

I could force my buttons either side of the page to have a different link to skip the page. I don't like this as I may update a navbar or the buttons and forget something and I will be republishing for little benefit.

I could write a jQuery script that establishes the referer (e.g. history.previous) and redirects over the page [forward] (the majority of instances I would imagine) or back as appropriate.
The benefit of this it could be enabled and disabled form a single file so no Xara publishing would be necessary.

Have I missed a "Do not Publish this Page" option somewhere?

[gwpriester]

There is no option to publish only certain pages. It's all or nothing.

But if you don't want a page to publish, then remove it from your document.

Go to the page you don't want to publish and click on the pasteboard but not on the page, then Edit > Copy Page.

Open a new blank page and Edit > Paste > Paste Page.

Name and save this page. Delete the page from your website and Publish.

When you are ready, copy the page from the document and Paste Page back into your website document.

Would it be easier to publish selected pages? One can only hope we get this option soon.

[Acorn]

Gary, thank you for your reply and confirmation of my suspicions.

I have a "solution" of sorts:

• I have these pages: ... | codebox.htm | snow.htm [the one I wish to skip] | excel.htm | ... - their names are spurious and not relevant but useful as an example.
• I created two dummy pages either side of snow.htm, which I have called - before-snow.htm and after-snow.htm.
• In before-snow.htm, Web Properties > Page > HTML code (head) I placed <meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=excel.htm">.
• In after-snow.htm, Web Properties > Page > HTML code (head) I placed <meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=codebox.htm">.

It sort of works but you do get a glimpse of the before-snow.htm page so changing it to match the site background may make the transition less obvious.
Doing this, "hides" snow.htm from the site but allows me to enter its URL directly to check its presentation across browsers before publishing.

There is no option to publish only certain pages. It's all or nothing.

But if you don't want a page to publish, then remove it from your document.

Go to the page you don't want to publish and click on the pasteboard but not on the page, then Edit > Copy Page.

Open a new blank page and Edit > Paste > Paste Page.

Name and save this page. Delete the page from your website and Publish.

When you are ready, copy the page from the document and Paste Page back into your website document.

Would it be easier to publish selected pages? One can only hope we get this option soon.

[Egg Bramhill]

How about dragging the page/pages you don't want published to the bottom of the page stack. On opening page either delete the previous button or link it to the last page in the page gallery you want viewable. Similarly on the last page you want viewable link the next button to the first page.

When you want to publish these hidden pages just drag them up the page gallery.

In the attached xar Page 3 doesn't show. But drag the page up to between page2 & page4 in the layer gallery & it's viewable without any need to change any button actions

EDIT: If you use repeat on all pages you'll need to delete these from the first & last published page and replicate them to point as desired.

[Acorn]

Egg, brilliant.
Rather than delete the Repeat on all Pages button on the last page before those I wish to hide, I would clone the same button in situ (Ctrl-k) and set its Link to the first (index) page.
On the first (index) page to do the same for the Previous button would require knowing the last page you want to publish; I could always just delete that index page button.

All in all, a good solution.