Excluded category from loop

Question

I'm using this to exclude a particular category from the loop. It DOES that, but it also does this: On my PAGES, it displays the posts from the categories other than this one which is excluded.

/** Replace the standard loop with our custom loop */
remove_action( 'genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'child_do_custom_loop' );

function child_do_custom_loop() {

    global $paged; // current paginated page
    global $query_args; // grab the current wp_query() args
    $args = array(
        'category__not_in' => 7, // exclude posts from this category
        'paged'            => $paged, // respect pagination
    );

    genesis_custom_loop( wp_parse_args($query_args, $args) );
}

Answer 1

Can't really help with custom Genesis code, but the WordPress way to modify the main loop is to filter pre_get_posts.

To exclude Category ID 7 from contexts other than single post pages:

function wpse72961_filter_pre_get_posts( $query ) {
    if ( is_main_query() && ! is_singular() ) {
        $query->set( 'category__not_in', 7 );
    }
    return;
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'wpse72961_filter_pre_get_posts' );