how to hide a page from being seen in wordpress backend and frontend - wordpress

Question

In my plugin i have created a custom template that prints a requested sidebar. and for running the code of this template i assigned a custom page to it (by calling update_metadata) .
Is it a good idea for getting content of a specific sidebar into Ajax call ?
Now my problem is that WORDPRESS shows it in the dashboard and front page , and after searching i have not found any easy to understand solution for Hiding a page completely so only can be accessed by its id .
Can any one tell me how to do that ?

Answer 1

you are going about this the wrong way. You can create a function that can create anything that can be created on a wordpress page.
But if you really must you can create a page outside of the database, etc:
add_action('init', 'add_rewrite_rule');
function add_rewrite_rule(){
// add_rewrite_rule(REGEX url, location, priority (i.e. top is before other rewrite rules)
// I created a custom post type for this plugin called market -- replace post_type with whatever you want
//basically tell wordress to add a query var if sidebar is added to url.
add_rewrite_rule('^sidebar?','index.php?is_sidebar_page=1&post_type=market','top');
}
// register a query var
add_action('query_vars','market_set_query_var');
function market_set_query_var($vars) {
array_push($vars, 'is_sidebar_page');
return $vars;
}
// associate a template with your quer_var
add_filter('template_include', 'market_include_template', 1000, 1);
function market_include_template($template){
if(get_query_var('is_sidebar_page')){
$new_template = (theme or plugin path).'/pages/yourpage.php'; // change this path to your file
if(file_exists($new_template))
$template = $new_template;
}
return $template;
}
This will not be a page that will be in the admin section or in any query that relates to pages but someone could of course navigate to this page. But as i said above you would be better to create a function to create your sidebar. If you want a seperate file to handle the "view" you use require_once 'filename'; a file and keep your functions area free of html.
If you are creating functions in a wordpress plugin dont forget many functions may not be available until later in the load process. Use add_action() if you run into any undefined functions
edit:
you are loading wordpress before you get to the template so you have all the functions. (google wp load for more info) + get_header() / get_footer() will also load a few things like css, etc. I had a small typo in the code above, fixed that but basically what you are doing is telling wordpress if someone lands on www.example.com/sidebar to apply a query_var (rewrite rule). Wordpress will look up its saved vars (final function) and return the template assoc. The 2nd function just registers the var.
You also have wp_functions in any file you create and include in a plugin, etc hence why you can create a file that does exactly the same as this page.