Using Access rules, you can make anything disappear from users in your Igloo. Hide articles, files, folders, even whole areas of the community with ease. But without access, people have no way to view, comment on, or interact with anything in that area, which can be a bit much if you're trying to streamline your navigation or channels. However, the Igloo platform offers a number of other options for hiding areas of your community while making the content available. 

Hiding from Navigation

Channels, Pages, and Spaces can be hidden from navigation using the Navigation option in the Site Manager, letting you streamline navigation and making it easier for people to find what they need. This lets you keep a number of essential channels or spaces in the top level of your community, but avoid the problem of a cluttered navigation bar. Items hidden this way often include: 

• A central microblog channel that's shown in a widget on the homepage. 
• A folder channel filled with image assets used in the theme. 

Hiding Files

Files and folders in Folder Channels have their own hiding option, letting you clean up areas in folder channels or hide archived files directly in the folder. For communities with a central file structure or who manage the view of their folders extensively, the hide function can be invaluable. Files and folders will be hidden to people with Read or Write access, and will appear greyed out for people with Edit or above. The Hiding function is often used to hide files in a folder channel to control downloads, letting administrators surfacing them by embedding them in articles or widgets, or by linking to the labels attached to those files. 

Hiding and Search

Because hiding objects through these methods doesn't change the Access directly, anything hidden in these ways can still be found in Search. The Hide function is designed to clean up menus and user interfaces only. The only way to lock an item or area away from users or search is to change the Access rules directly. 

For more information about the specific functions outlined here, you can read up on them in our Knowledge Base, or ask a question in the Community area.