We have used this in the our wedding theme, the cu3er slideshow  WordPress plugin from 18Elements uses a category to feed the display, when we added the images the slideshow category and the posts appeared, not a problem if the images form a part of a full post, but messy when used as placeholders.

View: The Wedding Theme.

We could hardcode the category ID and exclude this, that is fine on a static theme where we already know the Category ID, but what if we wanted to make the theme available to other clients or for free download.

On looking for a solution for our Artisteer theme to return a category ID we could not find a simple WordPress function to use on the lists, we have to create our own function that returns a value from the database, if you have been following our tutorials then you will already have demo-functions.php file, if not you can add them to the Artisteer functions.php file.

Add to either your demo-functions.php or the Artisteer theme functions.php

function demo_get_categoryID($catName){
 global $wpdb;
 $category_slug = str_replace(" ","-",$catName);
 $category_slug = strtolower($category_slug);
 $thevalue = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT term_id FROM $wpdb->terms WHERE slug = '" . $category_slug . "'" );
 if ($thevalue) {
 return $thevalue;
 }else{
 return "";
 }
}

Now we need to filter the categories list to exclude the slideshow category from the menu, you can change the name as required.

In the Artisteer theme functions.php we will add this block of code to the code that returns the categories list, look for this line and insert the code below.

Find: wp_list_categories(‘title_li=’); and replace with the following lines.

/* Start demo Category add line */
 $exclude = demo_get_categoryID('slideshow');
 if ($exclude){
 wp_list_categories('title_li=&exclude='.$exclude.'');
 }else{
 wp_list_categories('title_li=');
}
/* End demo Category add line */

So your code block should look like this:

add_action('get_terms', 'art_vmenu_get_terms_filter');
 add_action('wp_list_categories', 'art_vmenu_wp_list_categories_filter');

 /* Start demo Category add line */
 $exclude = demo_get_categoryID('slideshow');
 if ($exclude){
 wp_list_categories('title_li=&exclude='.$exclude.'');
 }else{
 wp_list_categories('title_li=');
 }
 /* End demo Category add line */
 remove_action('wp_list_categories', 'art_vmenu_wp_list_categories_filter');
 remove_action('get_terms', 'art_vmenu_get_terms_filter');

last step is to add our image into two Artisteer files, index.php and archive.php, look for this line and insert the code below.

Find: <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> and paste in the following lines

<!-- Start Check if our post is a slideshow post -->
<?php $slideCat = demo_get_categoryID('slideshow'); ?>
<?php if (in_category($slideCat) ) continue; ?>
<!-- End Check if our post is a slideshow post continue if it is -->

So your code block should look like this:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<!-- Start Check if our post is a slideshow post -->
<?php $slideCat = demo_get_categoryID('slideshow'); ?>
<?php if (in_category($slideCat) ) continue; ?>
<!-- End Check if our post is a slideshow post continue if it is-->
<div>

Now we have hidden our slideshow category from view, remember that this will hide all posts in the specified named category, so only add the category to posts you do not want displayed .

Please leave a comment if you have found this post of use to your workflow.