Question

I have been presented with this code. The code displays the title headings of the latest 10 WordPress posts from the database. What I need to do is to eliminate a particular category from this. Can anyone help?

<?php require_once 'news/wp-config.php';
                    $howMany = 0;
                    $query ="SELECT `ID`, `post_title`,'post_category', `guid`,SUBSTRING_INDEX(`post_content`, ' ', 100) AS `post_excerpt` FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE `post_status`= \"publish\" AND `post_type` = \"post\" ";
                    $posts = $wpdb->get_results($query);
                    $posts = array_reverse($posts);
                    foreach($posts as $post)
                    {
                            if($howmany<10)
                            {
                                $link = $post->guid;
                                echo "<li><a target='_blank' href='$link'>$post->post_title</a></li>";
                                $howmany++;
                            }   

                    }


                    ?>

Answer 1

Or, you could use a second loop, something like this :

<div>
    <h3>Fresh Posts</h3>
    <ul>
    <?php
        $my_query = new WP_Query("cat=-3&order=DESC&posts_per_page=10");

        echo "<pre>"; print_r($my_query->query_vars); echo "</pre>"; // shows the variables used to parse the query
        echo "<code style='width: 175px;'>"; print_r($my_query->request); echo "</code>"; // shows the parsed query

    while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); //standard loop stuff
    $do_not_duplicate[] = $post->ID;?>

        <li id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

    <?php endwhile; ?>
    </ul>
</div>

once again WP 2.8.x. Lots of good info here : WordPress loop documentation