The Secret Page

[Corrupted Unicorn]

At this time of typing I have 3 secret pages in my website.

They are accessible by clicking VERY random things on my website, but once reached said site, they all make a lot of sense.

They're all silly fun, but one has an extra page with more depth (you could say... deep dish depth  )

But enough talking about MY secret pages, it's time to talk about yours. But don't just spoil me the surprise here, what I want to know is your thought process behind your secrets.

Do you hide your secret pages under hidden links or Do you have more convoluted systems to hide your secret pages? More importantly, WHAT is in your secret pages???      This latter one is harder to come to me apart from silly things that are tangentially related to what I'm talking about.

I want to make something to really reward the user willing to go deeper, but I'm also the kind to just offer everything she has to offer upfront. So it's hard to think about something that strikes the right balance between "well deserved reward" and something that I wouldn't put upfront on my website like I always do 

Alright, I'll spill the beans: carefully mouse over the text on my Toon Characters page

[wygolvillage]

I have a few, and I mostly prefer the "in plain sight" tactic, I have a secret page of "rejected" virtual pets accessed that way, plus the whole secret section of Clovenglade- I worried that accessing it is too obvious but a lot of people didn't realize there was a secret at all! I think the reward for it (a unique horse and a small minigame) is well worth peeking around for it.

On my Angel Hare shrine there's also a secret coloring page but it's random whether or not it will link to it when the page is loaded...

[TheFrugalGamer]

I have a secret / page that you can only get to by typing it directly into the address bar. It has some particular functionality that makes perfect sense when you think about it :)

I also have a more deeply hidden page on the site that you can only find if you look at the source code of my pages, then solve a small puzzle. Right now it doesn't lead to anything other than a "coming soon" page, but I've been aiming to add a mini game to it eventually.

I love the idea of hidden pages, since they're kind of a page-within-a-page that's just there for the most dedicated of viewers, or people who are just bored, lol. And I'll probably add more in the future at some point, once I get more ideas!

[Semper]

Secret pages rock! I think they're one of the best things about having a personal site (besides everything else that is awesome). I like stashing treats for people willing to search for them, as well as pages I want semi-private (meaning, I've mainly made them for my own use, but I'm also fine with someone else seeing them if they're curious enough to search).

I tend to hide my secret pages in plain sight within images, but also if people don't want to go on that hunt they can also just check out my sitemap, where I've pretty much listed everything on my site besides individual blog posts and sub-gallery pages (that would get too long). Arguably my secrets are not that hard to find, but I still consider them pretty secret since I do not spell out immediately how to find them on the page where I have hidden them. I have some more secrets planned for some of my galleries which I don't plan to even have listed in my sitemap, so there will be more difficult hunts in the future.

Also the way I have my secrets stashed is meant to work with the light narrative of my site, which is that it is situated on (or technically is) a large branching mycorrhizal network that resembles a tree floating in space. Each of my root pages have two white branch images placed on the z-index that... well :) that would give away the secret.