Show more than one post on the main page excluding certain category

Question

I'm currently running WordPress 4.5 with a WooTheme called The Morning After. I decided to change a few things here and there, but encountered some issues regarding the posts_per_page argument used in the WP_Query object. The intention is to show more than one post (3 or 4 posts) and ignore the category Featured articles.

$args = array(
    'posts_per_page'   => 2,
    'category__not_in' => get_cat_ID('Featured articles')
);

$query = new WP_Query($args);

while ( $query->have_posts() ) { 
    $query->the_post();
    echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
};

What am I doing wrong? Result is 4 posts including the posts that are in the category Featured articles.

Answer 1

If you are altering main query then use pre_get_posts filter instead of WP_Query.

add_action('pre_get_posts','wpse224610_alter_query');
function wpse224610_alter_query($query){
      $cat_id = get_cat_ID('Featured articles');
      $exclude_cat_id = -$cat_id;
      if( !is_admin() && $query->is_main_query() ){
         $query->set( 'cat', $exclude_cat_id );
         $query->set( 'posts_per_page', 4 );
      }
}

And the main loop will be

if( have_posts() ):
    while( have_posts() ): the_post();
       //The loop
    endwhile;
endif;

Check the return value of $cat_id , is it 0 or Featured articles category id ? check whether you spelled category name correctly as it is in the admin ?

From your code i assume you are trying to do secondary loop but as you told it's main loop , use above mentioned filter.

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