I can't seem to quite get the hang of the syntax
I can understand. I mixed several solutions. (:parent, :parent:start and :parent:parent). I just reset everything to the most natural way of doing things.
First of all, create only one page named start that will be the home page of your site. :start. Never again shall you use a page named "start".
Then create a "parent" page :parent
And whenever you need, create child pages :parent:child1 :parent:child2 etc... DokuWiki automagically creates the namespace :parent.
You can think of this as : "a page becomes a namespace when needed (but still exists as a page)"
under the hood, there is a page ":parent" and a namespace ":parent:", and a page ":parent:child1"
This is exactly what I suggested in my first answer... But, unfortunately, vanilla DokuWiki does not "merge" pages and namespaces that have the same name in sitemap. So you end up with a non clickable namespace, and, a few lines below, a page with the same name. In order to "merge" pages and namespaces that have the same name, you have to add the
indexmenu plugin. Thank you @virk !
Once the indexmenu plugin is installed, create a page named :indexpage. Indexmenu recommends that this page contain this :
{{indexmenu>..| navbar nocookie id#random}}
Or, if you prefer the javascript version
{{indexmenu>..| js navbar nocookie id#random}}
Then go to admin page, config settings.
In the display group, set
hidepages[/m] to [m]^:indexpage|sidebar|.*:sidebar
In the indexmenu plugin group set
page_index[/m] to [m]:indexpage
You're done.
When someone clicks on the sitemap link, (s)he gets the :indexpage instead of the default DokuWiki generated sitemap page.