Hiding public posts until the right time

Over the weekend I built a prototype for a small VR project that I plan to build this summer. This project involves a lot of visual jokes and gags, so in an effort not to spoil anything I decided not to post updates about it along the way.

Normally when I’m working on a project, I like to share short videos, screenshots, and micro blogs about it. In the past I would do that on Twitter, but I recently added a section to my site called Bloops for microblogging.

Not making regular public posts may help save the jokes until launch day, but at the same time I lose something valuable. Writing these short posts and making the videos forces me to think about the progress that I’m making and helps me to decide on what to do next. Sharing these posts is also a fantastic way to get feedback from friends along the way.

With that in mind, I decided to post updates about this project in my Bloops section. I added a new category for the project that I’ll use for any of these posts. To hide them, I’m using Ultimate Category Excluder to hide them from the main WordPress Query Loop, RSS Feeds, Search, etc. No one will stumble on these and have the project spoiled for them, but each post is still available under its own slug so I can share them with people who know about the project.

When I launch the project, I’ll turn off the exclusion rules. At that point I’ll have a fully published development log of the entire project that people can browse.