BuddyPress.org

Well I have narrowed it down to my get_exclude_categories_loop function.

Here is my new homepage loop code from the codex:

<?php

query_posts(array('category__not_in' => array(get_exclude_categories_loop))); ?>

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

?>

If I replace get_exclude_categories_loop with numbers like 4,6,52 then it works properly.

This leads me to believe that my get_exclude_categories_loop function is not returning a list of numbers to insert.

Here is what I do know:

1. my database has the right information so the UI is working as expected

zoo_cat_box_4 true

zoo_cat_box_5 true

zoo_cat_box_6 false

2. Using the new query_posts statement above works when on the homepage using hardcoded cat id #s

3. Leads me to believe that my get_exclude_categories_loop function is not returning numbers

or

I can’t call get_exclude_categories_loop in the query_posts like I am trying to do….

Any ideas what to change to get this working?

@MrMaz

Thank you for the pointers. Like I said, I am trying hard to learn how this stuff actually works so that I can become more self sufficient.

I did change out the valid php from above on my homepage, yet it’s still returning all of the posts.

I think something is wrong with my get_exclude_categories_loop function.

(It’s a mess as I am not exactly sure what the top half of the function is doing. copied it from another theme, and made so many changes throughout the day that I’ve lost track…. grrr

I do know that the information is in the database properly. So at least the user UI is working properly

function get_exclude_categories_loop($labelz) {

$labelz = "zoo_cat_box_";

$include = array();

$counter = 0;

$cats = get_categories('hide_empty=0');



foreach ($cats as $cat) {



$counter++;



if ( get_option( $labelz.$cat->cat_ID ) == 'true') {



$excludecats[] = $cat->cat_ID;

}

}

if(!empty($excludecats)){

$excludecats = implode(',',$excludecats);

}

return $excludecats;



}

Is there a way to ‘echo’ out the function so that I can at least see if it’s returning something ‘3,5,7’ etc?

I’ve narrowed down the query_posts function to one that works perfectly when I manually type in the numbers 4,42,46 that makes it so those categories are not showing up in the loop.

This works:

<?php

$excludecatss = get_exclude_categories_loop();

print_r ($excludecatss);

query_posts(array('category__not_in' => array(4,42,46)));

?>

This does not work:

When I don’t hardcode in the numbers and try to use my $excludecatss in there instead, it does not filter the loop like the hardcoded one did.

Tells me this function is not right…

<?php

$excludecatss = get_exclude_categories_loop();

print_r ($excludecatss);

query_posts(array('category__not_in' => array($excludecatss)));

?>

Both of them print out the proper numbers before running the query, so I know my print_r is returning exactly what I want, 4,42,46

Where I am stuck is the query_posts part.

I can’t seem to get that to have $excludecatss put the numbers there so they are excluded….

Thank you MrMaz

As it turns out I was being ‘mislead’ by the wp codex, and when you combine that with my limited knowledge of php, I was bound for problems.

The codex gives an example:

query_posts(array('category__not_in' => array(2,6)));

That lead me to believe that I needed to write my function to return a string of id’s separated by commas. Esp when I added in the numbers manually and it worked, that made it really confusing.

Once I removed those lines and made a small change to the homepage code, it worked perfectly.