Exclude post category in a blog page

Question

I have two links in

• "news" where all the news posts goes
• "blog" where the rest goes

just wanted to exclude the category "news" in the blog page

I use the code

$news = new WP_query ('category_name =-news')

and it is not working

Essentially, I want tell wordpress, I want all the posts to go into the "blog" page but not in the post that is categorize as "news"

Answer 1

In your functions.php file, use pre_get_posts and swap out the -1 in the following code with the category I.D you want to exclude from your posts page.

function exclude_category( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'cat', '-1' );
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category' );

Answer 2

Use the parameters cat or category__not_in:

$query = new WP_Query( 'cat=-1234' );

The minus means to exclude, the ID is used.

$query = new WP_Query( array( 'category__not_in' => array( 1234 ) ) );

Uses the ID too.

Use get_cat_ID() to get the ID by name or get_category_by_slug() to do it by slug, the latter returns an object though.