1. (the Good way) Make a separate master page without that running head, and apply where necessary.
2. (the Bad way) Shift+Ctrl (or Cmd)+click on the running header and delete it.
3. (the Ugly way) Add a thick white Rule Above to your Chapter Name paragraph style, thick enough and high enough to hide the running header.

New master. When setting it up, tell InDesign to base it on your original master, and then delete the header and make any other changes you wish to it. That way any style changes you make to your original master (adjusting the margin, moving the page numbers, or whatever) will automatically be reflected in the master used for the chapter titles.

Create a book file with the individual chapters as separate files.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751...

Set up each file with a master page with a text variable running head set to the chapter title style sheet (or to the document name if you prefer) and a master page without a running head for the first page.

When it synchronises it will keep the same master for the first page and default to the other for the remainder of the chapter.

I would go with Theunis's ugly way! It's the least work, will print fine, and the "deletion" of the running head will move with the chapter title. This is actually what I was about to suggest, but I arrived too late.

Thanks everyone for your advice - the "ugly" way seems cheating, but at the end of the day it can be reversed easily and the result is the same!

Several years ago I tried something similar to the "ugly" method, and although it looked fine on screen it caused problems at the print shop.

Perhaps it was the printer's fault, it seems like the technique should work. But unusual workarounds can sometimes cause unexpected problems, so you might want to do a test.

If you were to work on a book or document that is going to be edited, used for multiple formats or multiple master page styles, I recommend the book method. There is little difficult in creating the files and it takes full advantage of some of InDesign’s powerful editorial features.

Tim

If I did create a new master page for the start of the chapter, is there a way to avoid manually overflowing the text onto the next page with the standard master?

I've run into a problem in the past (no doubt down to my inexperience) where the text boxes on a spread were set up to allow for a larger inner margin - and inserting a new page threw out this margin as the page updated correctly but the text boxes somehow detached from the master

I am not sure I fully understand the problem, however, if you set the paragraph style to always start on a new page and create a new master page style (for facing pages) for chapter starts, then flow the text from the chapter master to the text master it should maintain the format.

Tim

The Ugly way has a nasty side effect if the layout is repurposed as a pdf. Users will see that obstructed heading flash for an instant before it is covered by the white box. Not nice, not professional.

Depending on your ID version you can control the behavior of overflow text. Check the In-Program Help.

Well the so-called "bad" method (manually deleting the header on those pages) isn't an elegant solution, but it's simple and will work fine. And if you need to change a title page back to a regular one later, just select "remove all local overrides" from the Pages palette fly-out menu and the deleted text box will reappear.

Those names reflect my personal view. I called these methods "Good", because it's the method as recommended by Adobe, "Bad" because manual overrides should be avoided whenever possible (I'm also neurotic about using proper paragraph and character styles for everything), and "Ugly" because ... well, it is!

Personally, rather than yet even more e-pub solutions you can only use with last years' products, I would like to have seen paragraph style-based Master Pages (or individual Master Page items) in CS6 ...

Thanks for your comments - I will take them all into consideration. I am preparing to set a new section (I imagine some time later today) and will experiment with the Masters-approach.

I will try to explain better the point I raised in my previous post.

Imagine I have a master spread of two pages. The master text boxes within these masters are set to allow for a greater inside margin than outside margin to allow for the curve of the page when the book is read. I then set the text. After the text is set, I find I need to place a new page (for instance, of photos or diagrams) half way through the document. I insert the page, and find that all of the text frames after this point are reversed in their layout, in that they have a greater outside margin than inside margin. InDesign correctly applies the master (I can see that the margins are still set up correctly), but for some reason the text boxes have delinked from the master and now need to be manually repositioned.

Does this have a simple workaround? Again, this is due to my inexperience with InDesign, so I suspect the answer is simple!

When I said "so-called" I didn't mean that as a put down. And I agree with you that ideally it's best to avoid manual overrides.

There's a simple solution. You can't just add one page, because any odd number of pages added or deleted will make this happen.

But you can just delete the text frame on the page where you want to add an image — and then the text will just start reflowing from the page after that, and not change the layout.

Joshua, thanks. That solution should have been obvious to me!

you can just delete the text frame on the page where you want to add an image

Or, even simpler, put the image frame on top of the text frame (with appropriate Text Wrap settings).
Doing this would keep the text reflowing without the need to recreate the text frame in case you need to move the image to a different page.

Insert a page break, anchor an image box within the text flow (if it will fit in the text area) and add a new page at the end of the flow to allow for the space taken up by the addition.

Tim