Hi Peter,
I apologize for any confusion, however this page is required for our for form preview functionality. This a hidden private page so that it can’t be accidentally deleted and break that functionality. Additionally, it’s only visible to admin users.
I hope this helps, and if you have any questions please let me know.
I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. I appreciate that the page is not visible to, nor included in any visitor-facing queries, but it does get included for me when I’m logged in and it throws the pagination out, and I don’t find that acceptable.
If you are unable to remove that page, then I have no choice but to remove your plugin – after all, WordPress is not short of form plugins!
Hey Peter,
I responded to your review, but I wanted to respond here in case anyone stumbles upon this thread in the future with a similar issue.
What you are describing is not normal, so there is likely another plugin on your site modifying the query within your Dashboard.
The way we modify the query to remove the preview page correctly adjusts the pagination used in the pages screen. Check out https://cl.ly/2V31133y041m which is a screenshot of WPForms activated with a clean WordPress installation.
What’s the pages screen got to do with anything? I’m talking about both a custom query and get_next_post().
I’ve installed Ninja Forms now. That has a preview function that just uses the standard page.php template, so I don’t see why you feel the need to do that.
I have to admit that I have just spent ages looking into this.
On my “Pages” view I saw there was a private page. I couldn’t work out what it was and had to use Google to find out where to look in the database.
Then I used a filter and it narrowed it down to your page.
Perhaps it would be advantageous to make a note in your instructions for the plug in:
“We create a private page called “….” which is used for “…”.
I think that is appropriate step to take.
Hi ajtruckle,
Our team is considering ways to modify how we handle the preview page, and the modifications to that should help to resolve this issue. I don’t have an ETA on when that will be ready, but it’s on our radar to address.
Thanks!
Had a similar experience to @ajtruckle, except the site I’m dealing with had just been hacked. So as I’m cleaning it up, I’m seeing there’s a private page that I can’t access as an admin. Love your plugin and am a pro user, but a different way of handling this might be a good idea.
Hi jaboi,
Definitely, and our team is looking to address this differently down the road! 🙂
So….
How do I get rid of the hidden private page once and for all?
I think I figured it out.
If I decide to delete WPForms I can go into the database and delete that page.
I do have to say…
I really do not like that I had to spend all this time trying to figure out why there IS a hidden private page.
So basically, you are doing something with this plugin that is causing headaches and wasting time.
This doesn’t make me want to pay for a premium version.
I will be buying one somewhere eventually – this is a mark against WPForms being that plugin.
No, I’m not raging mad here. 🙂
I’m just giving you feedback.
Trying to figure something like this out is NOT how I want to spend my time.
@thirstyjon I ended up using Contact Form 7.
I deleted WPForms as well for the same reason in favor of an alternative contact plugin. Publishing a private page without the admin’s consent is both unneeded and unacceptable.
I appreciate the feedback from everyone! 🙂
The good news is we do have plans to rework how form previews are handled which should get rid of the need for a private page to be created. The caveat is tricky to do, needs a good amount of testing, and we don’t yet have an ETA.
The reason we create a private page is because we need a page to send you to when decide to “preview” a form. It can’t be any regular page that already exists on your site, it has to be a special page with no content that contains the necessary logic to display the desired form to preview.
We use a “private” page because it’s only accessible by site administrators. This means it won’t get indexed by Google, won’t end up in your sitemap, etc.
So while you can see the private page, as a site administrator, no one else can. Even if there are various places on the frontend of your site where the form preview page is displaying (page listings, search results, menus, etc) it’s only showing because you are logged in. Normal users will not see it.
Again, I really appreciate the feedback around this and do apologize for the confusion. In the future we’ll be figuring out another approach to offer form previews without creating a private page!
I appreciate it may be a quick and easy solution and am glad you guys are working on a solution. But something like this should be opt-in only. I would have gladly not had the preview functionality as a tradeoff for not creating a dummy private page.
