Exclude uncategorized posts from search and archive pages

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In my WordPress site I want to prevent any uncategorized posts from showing up in site searches and in archive pages – including the front page of recent posts.

The only places that I want uncategorised posts to be visible are the actual posts themselves, and on the author archive pages, eg example.com/author/authorName

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I have looked in vain for a plugin. I reckon there must be some custom php, but my skills are not that deep.

Any help or clues greatly appreciated!

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  1. You have to exclude the category from the loop in your archive.php and index.php. This example uses category ID numbers, which you can find by going to Posts >> Categories. You’ll see the ID for each category.

    In your files mentioned above, find the loop

    <?php $query = new WP_Query( 'cat=-1' ); ?> // This is where you exclude. You can comma separate multiple categories : 'cat=-1,-2,-3' etc
 <?php if ( $query->have_posts() ) : while ( $query->have_posts() ) : $query->the_post(); ?>

 <div class="post">

 <!-- Here is the post content - use whatever your theme is using -->

 </div> 

 <?php endwhile; 
 wp_reset_postdata();
 else : ?>
 <p><?php _e( 'Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.' ); ?></p>
 <?php endif; ?>

    As for the search results, try this. This will go in functions.php (I haven’t tested it so let me know if there are issues).

    add_filter( 'pre_get_posts' , 'search_exclude' );
function search_exclude( $query ) {

if( $query->is_admin )
return $query;

if( $query->is_search ) {
$query->set( 'category__not_in' , array( 1 ) ); // Category ID
}
return $query;
}

    Please note: you can also comma separate the categories here by doing this:

    $query->set( 'category__not_in' , array( 1,2,3 ) );

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