Exclude categories from homepage but not from sidebar

Question

I would like to exclude categories from my homepage, but I want them to still display in the sidebar shown on the homepage, how can I do that?

At the moment my code excludes from both the content area and the sidebar, and I am putting the code in the functions.php file:

function exclude_category_home( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_home ) {    
        $query->set( 'cat', '-5, -34' );
    }
    return $query;
}

add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category_home' );

Answer 1

You may have to alter the loop on the homepage. Set it up in your index.php:

if ( is_home() ) {
query_posts( 'cat=-5,-34' );
}

and you should be good to go.