Customize category query in widget

Question

I would like to exclude a category from my categories sidebar widget. If I understand the way this works, the sidebar.php code is not in use since the widget is displaying the categories. (something similar was discussed in this support topic: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/problem-trying-to-hide-a-category-in-the-sidebar ).

How can I modify the query used by the widget; or is there another means of excluding specific categories from inclusion in the category list?

Answer 1

This may help...

http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/how-to-exclude-a-category-from-the-sidebar-list-in-wordpress/

Answer 2

I'll answer my own question so that the results are in the discussion thread.

All of the suggestions I've seen don't seem to work with the current version of WordPress (3.2). There are some widgets which will execute PHP script directly, used in conjunction with the correct query, this qualifies as a solution.

Plugins with PHP capability:

• PHP Code Widget http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/
• Exec-PHP http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/

I used PHP Code Widget myself.

The query:

<?php wp_list_categories('show_count=1&exclude=12,24&title_li='); ?>

(or similar).

You still need to lookup the value of the category or categories to exclude; in this case, I excluded categories 12 and 24