Hide Category

Is it possible to hide a category ?

Yep, turn it off, then go back and turn on manually all the products inside it in admin.

Then link directly to the category path if you want to access it.

Did a little testing and yes it is possible although it is a little strange how it acts. When you have linked products in a disabled category and then select to enable the category you have the option of enabling, disabling or no change to the products that are in that category, this is especially handy when the products are linked, however when you select to disable a category you don't get this option and it disables all the products that are in that category. When this happens it also disables all the links unless you go in and enable all the products manually and this will restore the link as well. It would be nice to have the same options available when disabling as you do when enabling the category.

Just noticed something interesting that when you delete a disabled Category that has linked products in it, the category will not show anymore but the linked product(s) that was in there still show up when the product is listed that it was linked to. It appears that now instead of being linked to the product they are now a product under the category it was linked to in the first place.