Exclude a specific category link from archive / front page

Question

I create posts that are used just to create an index item to show an existing post has been updated. The post I create 301 redirects to the updated post. I add these index posts to the category 'Update' and this excludes the posts from the previous and next post links via a plugin (I couldn't find any other way).

Problem is on the front page and archive pages the category each post is included in is displayed. I would like to exclude 'Update' category from these links as it is just for admin purposes.

Can I add something to my functions.php file which will prevent all links to the 'Update' category archive page being displayed?

Appreciate any guidance and apologies if this is covered already under a different term / search. I have looked.

Answer 1

Assuming that you are using get_categories to print the category links, there is an exclude parameter. You need to use IDs, so you will need to convert the slug with get_term_by

$cid = get_term_by('slug','update','category');
// var_dump($cid);
get_categories(
  array(
    'exclude' => $cid->term_id
  )
);