Hiding Category from Sidebar and Category Posts from Archives

Hello, I am totally new to all of this with very little to no background in PHP. I am currently trying to get a sidebar going on my blog that lists quick news with links.

I am trying to hide the ‘asides’ category of my miniposts from my categories list widget and have tried wp_list_cats(‘sort_column=name&optioncount=1&hierarchical=0%hide_empty=0&exclude=26’) to try to exclude the proper category but it just doesn’t seem to work.

Even if someone could help me to get that to work how would I then exclude the posts to the asides category from my archives.

I just want them only relegated to the sideblog and not visible anywhere else. If anyone could help me I would be indebted for life. Seriously.