Archive, Delete, or Hide Projects

Learn when to Archive, Delete, or Hide projects

Gayathri Rajendiran avatar
Written by Gayathri Rajendiran
Updated over a week ago

This task is for Site Administrators and Hub Administrators.

Closing the loop with your community is essential to a well-rounded project. It’s your opportunity to thank your participants and discuss the consultation results. When a project has run its course or served its purpose, you have a few options; Archive, Delete, or Hide it.

Archive your project

By archiving a project, you record the consultation on your site, tell your community the consultation has concluded, and retain reporting information. You can only archive a published project.

  1. On your project page, use the status dropdown menu to select Archive.

  2. You can choose to Archive now or Archive later; if you select Archive later, you can schedule your archive date by selecting the date from the calendar.

  3. Use the Archival message text editor to inform your community that the consultation has concluded. You can put as much detail as you need to in this field.

  4. Leave the box checked to Keep archived project visible to participants if you still want users to see this project. Unchecking this box will automatically hide the project.

  5. Select Archive now to archive the page immediately or Save your scheduled archive date.


You can use the same dropdown menu to Unarchive, Hide, or edit the scheduled archive date. If you Unarchive a project, it will return to a published state.

Participants can only access it using the URL or if it is listed on your homepage or All Projects page, so remember to inform your community of the project’s outcome.

Delete your project

Deleting removes a project from your site entirely, but you can only do it if there are no participant contributions. We recommend only using this for test or training projects, and remember to remove any links to the project from your site homepage.

  1. If the project is published, select Unpublish from the status dropdown menu.

  2. Use the status dropdown menu to select Delete. If the project has submissions, you will receive an error message telling you to contact support.

  3. If there are no submissions, enter your admin password and select Delete. Admins cannot delete projects if they log in via SSO.

Remember, there is no way to recover content once you have deleted a project; if you delete a project accidentally, you must recreate it from scratch. Users attempting to access the URL will land on a Page not found error page, with links to popular pages and the homepage.

Hide your project

Hiding a project removes it from public view but allows admins to access it. You can use this function if you’ve previously archived a project and want to hide it from the public. However, users with the URL will still be able to visit the project page. The project may already be hidden if the Keep archived project visible to participants box was unchecked when archiving the page.

Admins will also retain access to a hidden project’s reports. To Hide your project:

  1. Use the status dropdown menu on your project page to Hide your project. If you don’t see this option, you must Archive the project first.

  2. Use the same dropdown menu to Unhide your project and return it to an archived state.

Please note that search engines will not index hidden projects, but any projects previously indexed will still appear in search results until the site is reindexed.

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