WP_Query can’t exclude more than 1 author?

4 comments

1. You are right, it is not possible to pass an array with author IDs to exclude them. The reason is in wp-includes/query.php at line 2294 – 2298

   if ( strpos($q['author'], '-') !== false ) {
     $eq = '!=';
     $andor = 'AND';
     $q['author'] = explode('-', $q['author']);
     $q['author'] = (string)absint($q['author'][1]); // this line select the first ID and only this ID
   } else {
     $eq = '=';
     $andor = 'OR';
     }
   

   You have to get all author IDs, then exclude the unwanted authors and request the posts from the remaining authors

   // array for user IDs
   $users   = array();
   
   // roles to include
   $roles   = array( 'author', 'editor', 'contributor', 'administrator', 'superadmin' );
   
   // user IDs to exclude
   $exclude = array( 2,3,5 );
   
   // get all users
   $_users = get_users();
   
   foreach ( $_users as $user ) {
   
       // do not add the user ID if the users role does not match or the users ID is excluded
       if ( in_array( $user->ID, $exclude ) || ! in_array( $user->roles[0], $roles ) )
           continue;
   
       // add user
       array_push( $users, $user->ID );
   
   }
   
   $args = array('author=' . implode( ',', $users ); 
   $newquery = WP_Query( $args );
   

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2. As of WordPress version 3.7 (released in October 2013), you can now use author__in and author__not_in to pass an array of author IDs. Note that they both use two underscores after the word “author”.

   Here’s how you would exclude author IDs 2, 3, and 4:

   $query = new WP_Query( array( 'author__not_in' => array( 2, 3, 4 ) ) );
   

   Here’s a link to the codex.

   Here’s a link to the developer docs.

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3. I didn’t realize it before, but it seems that you currently can’t exclude multiple authors posts using WP_Query, I’ve updated the Codex to be less misleading.

   Here is a way to exclude posts from multiple authors using the $wpdb class:

   <?php
   
      $results = $wpdb->get_results(
      "Select * FROM $wpdb->posts
      WHERE post_type = 'post'
      AND post_status = 'publish'
      AND post_author <> 2
      AND post_author <> 3", 
      OBJECT
      );// gets posts, that are published, and exclude posts written by authors 2 and 3
   
      foreach($results as $result)
      {
      echo "<h2>".$result->post_title."</h2>";
      }
   

   ?>

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4. “UNTESTED” but could you do it this way?

    function filter_pre_get_posts( $query ) {
   
   // If this is the blog posts index,
   // and if this is the main query,
   
   if ( $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
       $query->set( 'author', -2,-3,4);
       }
    }
    add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'filter_pre_get_posts' );
   

   This is a function I picked up here for excluding categories. Not sure if it could be used to exclude by author but it is far better than writing a custom query if it works

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