Does anyone know if it's possble to effectively create an 'orphan' post, that is live and accessable, though isn't linked from the rest of the blog - i.e. not included in the categories/next/previous/or live on the front page?
Why do you want it to necessarily be a post? Do you want it to come onto the main page but not be in the categories for later? Is that the reason? Well, I think you would have to tweak the php programming a little bit to do that. I personally do not think Wordpress has the option of doing that by itself.
We want to be able to be a post at a later date without the URL changing. Think of submitting a story to a social network targeted at their viewers (it should be hiden from the main site users at this point) once the traffic from the social networks has finished the story can be tweaked for the site audience and un-hidden from the navigation - hopefully that makes sense!
i believe you have to set it to published at a later time, it is not visible to homepage, but can be accessed if you know the exact url. not sure though.
I've just tried setting a future publishing date, and this returns a 404 unless you're logged in as an admin so it won't work that way. Any other ideas?