Prevent tag directories from rendering, allow items to be included in content blocks

I have several directories which contain tagged content pieces, like features, testimonials, faqs, etc. Here is how the frontmatter looks at one of the examples:

---
title: "Otto M."
date: 2021-01-09T21:30:52+01:00
draft: false
weight: 1
type: testimonial
tags: 
- review_manager
---

##### Great features, fast and intuitive interface, happy customer.

This file resides in:

|- content
   |- testimonials 
      | testimonial_1.en.md
      | testimonial_[X].[lang].md

Right now the pages are being rendered and included in the sitemaps, which is not intended. If I include an _index.md or _index.en.md in the “testimonials” directory and add this frontmatter to it (and nothing else):

---
title: 
cascade:
  build:
    render: never
    list: always
---

it does stop rendering unwanted pages, but then the template will have zero range for this tag in a loop like this:

				{{ range .Site.Taxonomies.tags.review_manager }}
				<div class="testimonial">
					{{ .Content }}
					<p><span>{{ .Title }}</span></p>
				</div>
				{{ end }}

My config/hugo.toml includes

[taxonomies]
	tag = "tags"

I have to use tags, as the contents is being reused in different places and .Site.Taxonomies.tags seems to fit this purpose well.

It sounds like you want this instead:

content/testimonials/_index.md

cascade:
  build:
    render: link
    list: never

With the above:

  • Testimonial pages are not published
  • The testimonial section page is not published
  • Testimonial pages will not appear in any lists, including the sitemap and RSS feeds
  • Taxonomy terms assigned to testimonial pages are included in the taxonomy, and their relationship to the testimonial pages is maintained

Thanks, jmooring! This support forum would be very different without your help.