Movenext in loop without counting

Not quite sure, but I think this is what you want. Lets say you want to exclude category 12:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
   if (in_category(12)) continue;
?>

The main problem with this is that if all posts on the page are category 12, you will get a blank page.

Thanks vtxyzzy that’s what I’ve got but as you said, the potential is i could be left with a blank page. Is there no way to skip them but keep the number that i’m currently on so i don’t end up with a blank page?

The way to do that is to modify the query. I can’t be specific without seeing your code, but it should be something like this:

global $wp_query;
query_posts(
   array_merge(
      $wp_query->query,
      array('cat' => -22),
   )
);

where 22 is the id of the category you want to exclude. The query would be followed by the if (have_posts()) test.

hi vtxyxxy,

thanks for your help, i managed to try this today and get an error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ')' in C:\xampplite\htdocs\wordpress3-1\wp-content\themes\themename\loop.php on line 94
line 93,94 & 95 are:

array('cat' => -55),
)
);

if i take out the comma then the code compiles but it’s not taking the category away. full code is below if it helps, this is all in the loop.php file.
I probably haven’t explained things very well so i’ll try again. Basically i have a category (48=news) and (55=sport). In a nutshell i’m fudging my RSS feed, so i sometimes want ‘sport’ items to be in the ‘news’ RSS feed but ignored by the site front end. it may be easier to do it from the RSS side but I know less about RSS then i do about PHP (which is saying something!)

<?php elseif (in_category(48)) : ?>
 <?php $c = 0 ; ?>
  <div id="container_division">
   <?php
   global $wp_query;
   query_posts(
    array_merge(
     $wp_query->query,
      array('cat' => -55),
     )
    );
   ?>
   <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <?php $c++;
     if ($c == 1 or $c == 2 or $c == 5 or $c == 6 or $c == 9 or $c == 10) {
      $extra_class = 'Even';
     } else {
      $extra_class = 'Odd';
     } ?>
    <div class="post-block<?php echo $extra_class; ?>">
     --output image, excerpt etc
    </div>
   </div>
   <?php endwhile; else: ?>
   <?php endif; ?>
   </div>
<?php wp_reset_query() ?>

Sorry for the extra comma – betrayed by the flying fingers!

The code you have looks OK, but I am curious about the first line:

<?php elseif (in_category(48)) : ?>

That indicates to me that this code is only executed when the current post is category 48, so I wonder if the code is being executed at all.

To find out, put in this line just after that one:

<?php echo "<h2>TESTING</h2>"; ?>

hi, yes it is being executed. It isn’t necessary on reflection (though to get this work it probably would) but its in there and works, just probably not very efficient.

I don’t know what else to try. The code looks correct for excluding the category. Are posts from that category still showing up?

what template are you working at?
can you paste the whole code of the template into a https://wordpress.pastebin.com/ and post the link to it here?

also, have a look into ‘category__not_in’.
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Function_Reference/query_posts#Category_Parameters

I am still curious about the in_category() call. That is normally used either in the loop, or in templates where a single post is shown, not a category archive.

If you are testing for a category archive, you want to use is_category() instead.

Hi all, sorry was busy over the weekend.
vtxyzzy – yes the posts from sport are still showing up and all the code is within the “loop.php” file which is called using the “get_template_part” call.
alchymyth – thanks the “category_not_in” looks like that might do it, i’ll have a try when i’ve chance later and let you know but it seems to be exactly what I’m after!

I think the problem is that you have created a loop within the main loop. There is a ‘while (have_posts())’ line near the top of loop.php that starts the loop. Your elseif statement seems like it is in the middle of the loop, and your query then would be a second loop.

Since I can’t see all of the code, this is somewhat of a guess, but I think you need to move your category restriction to a point before the main loop starts.

Put your code in a pastebin, as alchymyth says, and post a link to it here.

ok, full file (except for printing the stuff to the screen) is up on pastebin, think i’ve done it right: https://wordpress.pastebin.com/B5J7HD0r

I am confused by all the separate (almost identical) loops. Please explain what you want to happen, not what you are trying to code.

yeah, as i mentioned before, on reflection their completely un-needed I just haven’t got round to taking them out.
Within the parent category of ‘news’ there are 5 or so sub-categories, occasionally i want to say that a ‘news’ item is also a ‘sport’ item (another parent category).
However I don’t want the sport item to appear on the website front end under news, ONLY in the RSS feed (as this is picked up by some news agregator sites that send quite a bit of traffic).
But, if i just skip the ‘sport’ item (which is easily done) i’m left with a blank space (only 10 items are displaying on the front end before ‘previous’ and ‘next’ buttons appear), I want to be able to skip the ‘sport’ item on the front end but not have that blank space.
so if out of 12 items, 10 are news and 2 are sport, then the RSS feed will show them all, but the front end would just ignore the 2 sport and simply show 10 news items and not go over 2 pages.
probably haven’t explained it any better!

Try changing the array merge just a little:

<?php elseif (in_category(48)) : ?>
   <?php $c = 0 ; ?>
   <div id="container_division">
      <?php
      global $wp_query;
      query_posts(
            array_merge(
              $wp_query->query,
              array('cat' => '48,-55'))
      );
      ?>
      <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
         <?php $r = ++$c % 4;
         if ($r == 1 or $r == 2) {
            $extra_class = 'Even';
         } else {
            $extra_class = 'Odd';
         } ?>
         <div class="post-block<?php echo $extra_class; ?>">
            //print the stuff out
         </div>
      <?php endwhile; else: ?>
      <?php endif; ?>
   </div>
   <?php wp_reset_query() ?>

I also tweaked the Even/Odd code so it should work if you ever want to change the posts_per_page to something other than 10.