Each of your Joomla articles must have a corresponding menu link. Any article without an explicit menu link can't be displayed.

But occasionally there may be articles that you don't want accessed via the main menus. For example, an article describing the rules for your discussion forum (which would be linked from within the forum) or a redirect page after submitting an online form.

So how to display those articles? The answer is to use a hidden menu. The following steps describe how to create a hidden menu in Joomla.

1. Create a new menu. Call it "Hidden Menu."
2. Create a new article. The article content isn't important. It's just a placeholder. Call it "Hidden Menu Article."
3. Add a new menu item in the Hidden Menu for the Hidden Menu Article. Use Article Mode from the list of menu item options.
4. Create a new module (Menu type module) for the Hidden Menu. Set the menu to display only on the Hidden Menu Article page. (Remember to "publish," or enable, the module.)

Voila! You've created the Hidden Menu. The Hidden Menu is active, but doesn't display on any normal page on your website. Now you can add menu items (i.e., links to articles) that aren't visible to your website customers.

For example, you can create a redirect page for a form ("Your information was submitted, someone will contact you shortly, etc.") and put the menu item link in the Hidden Menu. Typically, such a page wouldn't need to be accessed directly by visitors.

The only thing left to do now is get the URL or address of the hidden page. There are a couple of ways to do it. You can use a module like Linkr, a free utility. Or you can set the Hidden Module to display on your home page temporarily, and simply copy the URL. Copy the URL and use it wherever you want. I use the JCE editor (which has a direct link button) and include it in my website designs.

Here's a link to a secret article that doesn't appear on this website's normal menus, only on a hidden menu:

http://www.foothillwebdesign.com/secret-article