Title: Ultimate Category Excluder Author: Marios Alexandrou Published: February 25, 2011 Last modified: December 29, 2025 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/ultimate-category-excluder/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=1352232) ![](https://ps.w.org/ultimate-category-excluder/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=1352232) # Ultimate Category Excluder By [Marios Alexandrou](https://profiles.wordpress.org/marios-alexandrou/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder.zip) * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/#description) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/#reviews) * [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/#installation) * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/) ## Description Ultimate Category Excluder, abbreviated as UCE, is a WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly and easily exclude categories from your front page, archives, feeds, and searches. Just select which categories you want to be excluded, and UCE does all the work for you! ## Screenshots * [[ * Check the categories you want to exclude. ## Installation 1. Download Ultimate Category Excluder. 2. Unzip the ultimate-category-excluder.zip file. 3. Activate the plugin on your plugins page. 4. You can edit the options by going under “Settings” and then “Category Exclusion.” 5. If you are upgrading from an older version, you need to go into your “Category Exclusion” settings, choose at least one option from the Searches column, save settings, then go back and clear that option and save again. ## FAQ ### When I go to my search results page for any search I do, I get this PHP error: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /wp-content/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/ultimate-category-excluder.php on line Go into your “Category Exclusion” settings, choose at least one option from the Searches column, save settings, then go back and clear that option and save again. ## Reviews ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cd7a355d6507b44d4af59820da92551271f51dd9453e32a9547015c550f8d37c? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Not great – too basic](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/not-great-too-basic/)󠁿 [mikelidbetter](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mikelidbetter/) December 28, 2025 Very basic and only works on native Post categories from what I can see, I wanted to use it for WooCommerce categories. Unable to exclude/include a category from the native WP categories list. You must go into the actual plugin to do it. Therefore it wasn’t at all useful for what I wanted. I would have given it zero stars if I could. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6ecb4175d367596874b9a95c48db8bfde52585f0b07cebdc959978d8f0aa9377? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Killed my Elementor menus and footers](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/killed-my-elementor-menus-and-footers/)󠁿 [georgepond](https://profiles.wordpress.org/georgepond/) March 15, 2025 Warning to Elementor users. Do not install/activate this plugin!I have an WordPress/ Elementor website which has been live for months and I’ve used several plugins with it. Immediately after I activated Ultimate Category Excluder and tried to exclude one blog post category, ALL of the pages on the site lost their headers and footers. That was a very scary moment! The solution (after deleting this plugin!) is to change the site layout back to “Elementor Full Width.” For some reason, the Ultimate Category Excuder sets the site layout to “Elementor Canvas”… which hides the Header and Footer. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/58aff5947def01540532681b6980371e27be455d5c8adeb6f60c61424630cbfe? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[It Works!!!!!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/it-works-2505/)󠁿 [CyberCobre](https://profiles.wordpress.org/cybercobre/) June 29, 2024 I’m thrilled to report that IT WORKS!!!!!! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0d26be441cf8e2dbd8ff421b2b584a3f9a03ea1ea9b5fb3b305b098f889feefd? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Add a button to check all categories at once](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/add-a-button-to-check-all-categories-at-once/)󠁿 [colnago1](https://profiles.wordpress.org/colnago1/) February 24, 2024 Add a button to check all categories at once ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6748096252a4aafe3f38ecb5bd2d987759c693d4ba2e235431513e16a94e3037? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[EXCELLENT – does exactly what I needed](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excellent-does-exactly-what-i-needed/)󠁿 [JJNW](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jjnw/) January 9, 2024 THANK YOU – does what it says – very awesome, very cool – THANK YOU!!!! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1ad3202fc1cd9c56bf9dcb4652270bd4607a6150aa78081d9d8ff1c635556cdf? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Killed my traffic](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/killed-my-traffic/)󠁿 [spreaditunlimited](https://profiles.wordpress.org/spreaditunlimited/) September 15, 2022 It got my site to 0 organic traffic after using it to hide just 1 category [ Read all 77 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/) ## Contributors & Developers “Ultimate Category Excluder” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ Marios Alexandrou ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/marios-alexandrou/) “Ultimate Category Excluder” has been translated into 7 locales. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/contributors) for their contributions. [Translate “Ultimate Category Excluder” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/ultimate-category-excluder) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ultimate-category-excluder/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/ultimate-category-excluder/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/ultimate-category-excluder/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/ultimate-category-excluder/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Changelog #### 1.7 * Added option to disable category exclusion if request for posts is coming from authenticated API. Thanks to Daniel Jalkut (Red Sweater) (@redsweater) for providing the code. #### 1.6 * Added array checks to avoid fatal error on plugin’s admin page. #### 1.5 * Corrected text domain value. #### 1.4 * No code changes. Syncing files. #### 1.3 * Modified implementation of text domain to match the standard approach. #### 1.2 * Addressed minor vulnerability reported by SCA AppSec of Checkmarx. If concerned, review your UCE category settings to ensure they are set as expected. #### 1.1 * Bug fix for compatibility with Yoast Video SEO plugin. #### 1.0 * Bug fix thanks to Golemming (re. deprecated function mysql_get_server_info). * Compatibility with WordPress 4.4.2 confirmed. * Documentation updated. No functionality changed. * Plugin development and support transferred from Michael Clark to Marios Alexandrou. #### 0.96 * September 11, 2013 – Went back to the last known (no complaints at least!) version, 0.84. #### 0.95 * September 10, 2013 – Fixed some more bugs that I introduced while trying to fix other bugs. Cleaned up the code, tried to be more consistent with line spacing and indents so everything is easier to read. Released the Beta version. #### 0.94 * September 9, 2013 – It turns out that some themes process their home pages in odd ways. This resulted in UCE no longer correctly filtering out the excluded categories. This was a hard bug to figure out, as I couldn’t reproduce it on any of my sites. I think I’ve got it fixed now, but I do have a report that UCE is now causing a conflict with a separate page on the site. So I am working on that; but since this version should fix most people’s home pages, I’m releasing it while continuing to bug hunt. Thank you for your patience. Many thanks to Michael Westergaard, Alyx Hydrick, Alain Saintpo, Seth Vore, and Michael Pollock for their help in figuring out what was happening. I also fixed several very subtle bugs that were throwing error messages behind the scenes. And I tweaked the system information section at the bottom of the UCE settings page. Added the Danish translation. I don’t who to thank for providing this. Added Brazilian translation. Thank you to Leandro Callegari Coelho. Feel free to send me other languages if you like. #### 0.91 * September 4, 2013 – You can now exclude categories from appearing in results from the built-in WordPress search engine. Other search engines (e.g. Bing, Google) may still be able to find and index your content. Also fixed a bug that excluded categories from appearing in the Post Editor. And fixed a bug in the system information section. #### 0.84 * August 3, 2013 – Fixed empty category bug. Again. #### 0.83 * August 2, 2013 – Added code to give version info for MySQL, PHP, WP and UCE. UCE also works with WP 3.6. #### 0.8 * July 7, 2011 – Categories that do not have any posts in them will now appear on the list of categories. #### 0.7 * May 6, 2011 – Added internationalization (i18n) based on Patrick Skiebe’s suggestion and code. He has provided a German translation. Feel free to send me other languages if you like. #### 0.6 * February 24, 2011 – Addressed a bug in UCE that didn’t handle multiple excluded categories correctly. #### 0.5 * February 24, 2011 – Addressed a bug in WP 3.1. #### 0.4 * October 10, 2009 – A user pointed out a bug when trying to filter down categories in the edit posts admin area. I believe I’ve fixed this, but let me know if you still have trouble. #### 0.3 * June 20, 2009 – James Revillini pointed out a few fairly obvious bugs. I’ve incorporated his changes into the software. #### 0.21 Beta * January 10, 2008 – Initial release, fixed file name bug, dashes vs. underscores #### 0.2 Beta * December 13, 2007 – Initial release, tweaked to refer to PlanetMike.com, no functionality changed #### 0.1 Beta * February 14, 2007 – Initial release ## Meta * Version **1.7** * Last updated **4 months ago** * Active installations **50,000+** * WordPress version ** 5.0 or higher ** * Tested up to **6.9.4** * Languages * [Chinese (Taiwan)](https://tw.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), [Danish](https://da.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), [Dutch](https://nl.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), [English (Canada)](https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), [German](https://de.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), [Russian](https://ru.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/), and [Spanish (Spain)](https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/). * [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/ultimate-category-excluder) * Tags * [exclude categories](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/exclude-categories/)[exclude category](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/exclude-category/) [hide categories](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/hide-categories/)[hide category](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/hide-category/) * [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-category-excluder/advanced/) ## Ratings 4.2 out of 5 stars. * [ 58 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/?filter=5) * [ 2 4-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/?filter=4) * [ 5 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/?filter=3) * [ 2 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/?filter=2) * [ 10 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/?filter=1) [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ Marios Alexandrou ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/marios-alexandrou/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/ultimate-category-excluder/) ## Donate Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin? [ Donate to this plugin ](https://infolific.com/technology/software-worth-using/ultimate-category-excluder/)