How to exclude certain portfolios from a loop

Question

I am new to the site and have racking my brain on a Wordpress issue for days. Hope you the intelligent people here can help me figure this out.

I have a page on my website that displays all my portfolios at once. My portfolios can be categorized into different 'sets'. There are particular 'sets' that I would like to not display on this page. The page can be viewed here: http://www.industrygallerydc.com/works/

I believe I have pinpointed the loop that causes the portfolio 'sets' to display:

//prepare data for pagintion
$offset_query = '';
if(!isset($_GET['page']) OR empty($_GET['page']) OR $_GET['page'] == 1)
{
    $current_page = 1;
}
else
{ 
    $current_page = $_GET['page'];
    $offset = (($current_page-1) * $portfolio_items);
}

$args = array(
    'numberposts' => $portfolio_items,
    'order' => $portfolio_sort,
    'orderby' => 'date',
    'post_type' => array('portfolios'),
    'offset' => $offset,
);
if(!empty($term))
{
    $args['portfoliosets'].= $term;
}

$page_photo_arr = get_posts($args);


//Get all portfolio items for paging

$args = array(
    'numberposts' => -1,
    'order' => $portfolio_sort,
    'orderby' => 'date',
    'post_type' => array('portfolios'),
);
if(!empty($term))
{
    $args['portfoliosets'].= $term;
}

$all_photo_arr = get_posts($args);
$total = count($all_photo_arr);

if(isset($page_photo_arr) && !empty($page_photo_arr))
{   
?>

Is there a way I can exclude a 'set' here?

Answer 1

so I am thinking your $arg would be:

$args = array(
    'numberposts' => $portfolio_items,
    'order' => $portfolio_sort,
    'orderby' => 'date',
    'post_type' => array('portfolios'),
    'offset' => $offset,
    'exclude'         => '1,2',
);

And that would exclude post 1 and 2.

But a better option that you should do, is to just create a featured category for your work. And then only display the posts that are in the featured category. That way you wouldn't have to hand type in post ID's everytime you want them excluded in your loop.