Pagination Problem When Excluding Certain Categories from Blog Main Page

7th Sep 2009 | Posted by reza | 35 Comments

In our newest theme, I had to exlcude a category from main loop of that theme. The wordpress codex said that we could use query_post() function to do that

Then they gave an example, if I wanted to exclude a category with ID=3, I could add this line to my index.php file, before main loop lines:

<?php
if (is_home()) {
query_posts("cat=-3");
}
?>

It worked! The posts from category I wanted to exclude didn’t show up

wordpress

But, unfortunately, the link to show previous post in my main page didn’t work. If I clicked the link, It didnt show posts that should appear in the second page. Instead, It kept showing posts from the front page

After googling for the answer, I found out that actually, this query_post() function override paged offset.

To get proper pagination, we should recreate it through pagination parameter of query_post

First, we ask wordpress the page that we are on

To do this, we use get_query_var() function:

<?php
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
?>

That line means if the ‘paged’ query variable is available, $page will receive value of that variable(wich is page number). If not, we assume we are on the first page, and give $page value 1.

and finally, we use $paged as pagination parameter of query_post() :

<?php
query_post("cat=-3&paged=$paged");
?>

This line means…show posts of the page=$paged, except posts from category with ID=3

In short, if you want to exclude category with ID=3 (for example) from your blog main page, place this code before the main loop:

<?php
if (is_home()) {
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts("cat=-3&paged=$paged");
}
?>

And category 3 will be exclude without any problem in pagination.

credit: Kafkaesqui at wordpress.org

33 Comments to “Pagination Problem When Excluding Certain Categories from Blog Main Page”

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gjac says:

January 27, 2010 at 15:59

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!

Reply
- ekosetiawan says:
  
  January 27, 2010 at 18:11
  
  Good, we are glad that helped
  
  Reply
TSwain says:

February 1, 2010 at 13:19

I don’t usually reply to posts but I will in this case, great info…I will add a backlink and bookmark your site. Keep up the good work!

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WP Themes says:

February 1, 2010 at 17:44

Amiable dispatch and this fill someone in on helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you for your information.

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Steave says:

February 11, 2010 at 06:10

Interesting post as for me. I’d like to read a bit more about that theme. Thnx for posting that info.

Reply
WP Themes says:

February 12, 2010 at 16:02

Nice post and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Gratefulness you on your information.

Reply
graphicbeacon says:

February 19, 2010 at 06:51

Thanks a lot for this. I was experiencing this same problem since yesterday when I wanted to exclude a category from the posts page of a client site that im working on and this solution worked great! Subscribing now.

Reply
- Eko S. says:
  
  February 19, 2010 at 08:38
  
  We are glad that helped and we are happy too….that’s great
  
  Reply
stratosferik says:

February 25, 2010 at 04:47

Thank you for the code, this saved me a lot of time trying to figure out how to solve this.

Reply
admin says:

February 25, 2010 at 06:45

Your welcome

The problem wont take lot of your time if you use the right keyword to google the solutions

nice site you have there stratosferik

Reply
WP Themes says:

April 8, 2010 at 21:19

Good brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Thank you on your information.

Reply
Shane says:

July 27, 2010 at 07:38

Thanks so much man. I was being driven demented looking for a solution to this problem. Glad you could help me out!

Reply
kristina says:

August 20, 2010 at 14:54

the syntax for this was off for me, however i found a fix. if anyone has the same problem, try this:

note: i changed it from “if on the homepage” to “if posts exist”

Reply
- reza says:
  
  August 20, 2010 at 22:10
  
  uhm, unfortunately, your code seems cut off
  
  Reply
Jeremia says:

September 2, 2010 at 23:33

Thanks a ton for this, I was running into the same problem when trying to set up my categories. Spent a good deal of time trying to figure this out – and your solution worked perfectly

Reply
David White says:

September 7, 2010 at 05:44

I looked all over the WordPress codex for answers to this, and after lots of code changes, found nothing that solved the problem.

This correctly written code solved the problem straight away. Thanks for publishing this – it’s saved me a real headache – I was ready to rebuild the website in a new template!

Thanks again

David

Reply
Duane says:

November 11, 2010 at 00:03

Saved me a lot of googlingthank you so much. cheers.

Reply
J says:

February 7, 2011 at 22:49

What about if i want to exclude multiple categories?

Reply
- reza says:
  
  February 8, 2011 at 22:59
  
  use comma
  
  the code will be :
  
  query_posts(“cat=-3, -8, -10&paged=$paged”);
  
  Reply
  - J says:
    
    February 17, 2011 at 18:03
    
    Thanks Reza
vCopia says:

February 20, 2011 at 13:09

Boy Kafkaesqui, that string is exactly what I was looking for. I, too, used

<?php
if (is_home()) {
query_posts(“cat=-3″);
}
?>

and only today realized it didn’t exclude posts past page 1. You’re code work perfectly, down to the category #. Genuinely appreciate your sharing it. Saved me hours of research and testing.

Thanks
vCopia

Reply
afarras says:

March 23, 2011 at 03:17

I have two languages in my blog, and when i try to go to older posts of one category, wordpress change to default language and not the language that i’m using in the moment
any solutions

thnaks

Reply
daniel mamann resort says:

May 28, 2011 at 21:08

Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your website? My website is in the exact same niche as yours and my visitors would definitely benefit from a lot of the information you present here. Please let me know if this okay with you. Cheers!

Reply
Rebekah says:

August 7, 2011 at 18:19

Yes! This fixed that issue perfectly! Thanks

Reply
edu says:

September 13, 2011 at 05:41

I love you!!!

thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reply
Melinka says:

September 26, 2011 at 13:38

Thanks a lot!!! Finally!!

Reply
Jorch says:

February 27, 2012 at 15:44

thanks a lot bud!! you saved my life

Reply
DJ says:

March 18, 2012 at 09:27

I’m using the following code (as per your suggestion) on my homepage. The homepage lists the 5 most recent post …. but the OLDER POSTS link takes me to a page that lists the same 5 most recent posts (not 6-10)

$paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
echo $paged;
query_posts(‘posts_per_page=’.$numposts.’order=DESC&paged=’.$paged);

So, oddly enough, I changed paged=’.$paged to paged=’.$page
$page outputted the page you were on. $paged always displayed ’1′ for some reason. So, here is what worked for me…

$paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
query_posts(‘posts_per_page=’.$numposts.’order=DESC&paged=’.$page);

Reply
vietpn says:

August 4, 2012 at 09:01

like this @vietpn …

Reply
Joseph01 says:

December 14, 2012 at 09:30

Thank You Maaaaaaaaaaaaan You Just solved my problem

Reply
Jason says:

April 18, 2013 at 20:26

Thanks very much. This post offered a solution that I was unable to find on the WordPress forum.

In case anyone is wondering, the code also works if you need to limit results to one category, rather than exclude posts from one category — i.e. it also works for cat=X, not just cat=-X.

Reply
Dave says:

September 13, 2013 at 02:29

When you made these changes, what pages did you make the changes to? Your post never says or indicates which php file(s) you had to modify.

Thanks!

Reply
Roland says:

June 11, 2014 at 02:49

Cheers mate…

Reply