How do I exclude a custom taxonomy from the post loop

Question

Is there a simple or easy way to exclude all posts from a custom taxonomy in the loop? I've been looking high and low, and neither SE, SO or Google seem to have a straight answer.

I know it can be done via a WPDB query, but that just seems like massive rope to jump for something that should be fairly simple.

Answer 1

You would want to use the NOT EXISTS operator along with passing the taxonomy slug, which tells the query not to include any of a chosen category from your custom taxonomy inside the loop.

To exclude all posts that are in the taxonomy "fruit" (regardless of fruit kind), here is the snippet:

$args = array(
    'post_type'      => 'post',
    'tax_query'      => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'fruit',
            'operator' => 'NOT EXISTS'
        )
    )
);

$query = new WP_Query( $args );

Answer 2

The solution to this isn't really that publicised, but it should be.

You can do the following:

$args['tax_query'] = array(
    array(
        'taxonomy' => 'category',
        'terms' => array('cat', 'dog'),
        'field' => 'slug',
        'operator' => 'NOT IN',
    ),
);
query_posts($args);

The operator argument can take other terms, but the above code is basically saying get all posts from the taxonomy 'category' that don't have the terms 'cat' or 'dog'.

Answer 3

Here's how to do it for custom post types and custom taxonomies:

$happening = new WP_Query(
array( 
  'post_type'  => 'news',        // only query News post type
  'tax_query' => array(
    array(
        'taxonomy'  => 'news-cat',
        'field'     => 'slug',
        'terms'     => 'media', // exclude items media items in the news-cat custom taxonomy
        'operator'  => 'NOT IN')

        ),
   )
);

This worked perfectly to exclude custom taxonomy from custom post type.. Just wanted to add the query loop code to finish off the snippet: while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post();

Answer 4

query_posts( array(
    'post_type' => 'listings',
    'tax_query' => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'status',
            'field'    => 'slug',
            'terms'    => 'sold',
            'operator' => 'NOT IN'
            ),
        )
    )
);

This code excludes status => sold from post_type => listings

Answer 5

I did the following to exclude posts from a certain taxonomy term:

$argos = array( 
    'tax_query' =>  array (
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'topics', // My Custom Taxonomy
            'terms' => 'college', // My Taxonomy Term that I wanted to exclude
            'field' => 'slug', // Whether I am passing term Slug or term ID
            'operator' => 'NOT IN', // Selection operator - use IN to include, NOT IN to exclude
        ),
    ),
    'post_type'=>'page', // Post type I want to show, can be a custom post type too
    'posts_per_page' => -1,
    'orderby' => 'title',
    'order'=>'ASC',
    'post_parent' =>$post->ID // show child posts or pages of current page/post
); 

$query = new WP_Query( $args );

Answer 6

I use the "RYO ‘Category Visibility’ WordPress Plugin" that seems to work pretty well.

You can decide on an admin page what categories are visible or excluded from various areas.

http://ryowebsite.com/wp-plugins/category-visibility/

-Adam