Include all categories except one

Thanks for your question and for including the source text of your [mla_gallery] shortcode; very helpful.

You can use MLA’s “Simple Taxonomy Parameters” or the more powerful “Taxonomy Queries” to accomplish your task. More information on both of these can be found in the corresponding sections of the Settings/Media Library Assistant Documentation tab.

For your application, the “Simple Taxonomy Parameters” solution would be something like:

[mla_gallery]
attachment_category="some-term"
tax_operator="NOT IN"
tax_include_children="false"
post_mime_type=all
size=icon
link=file
mla_caption="{+title+}"
[/mla_gallery]

I have used the alternate “enclosing shortcode” syntax to break up the query for readability and to avoid some WordPress parsing problems for complex shortcodes.
The first parameter names the taxonomy you want and the term to exclude. The second parameter specifies the “exclude” condition you want. These replace the post_parent=all parameter in your original query, which is not needed when taxonomies are involved. I also added link=file to open the file when clicked.

The “Taxonomy Query” solution looks something like this:

[mla_gallery]
tax_query="array(
    array(
        'taxonomy'=>'attachment_category',
        'field'=>'slug',
        'terms'=> array('some-term'),
        'operator' => 'NOT IN',
        'include_children' => false
    ),
)"
post_mime_type=all
size=icon
link=file
mla_caption="{+title+}"
[/mla_gallery]

Either one should work. I have added “include children’ false to both examples. If your taxonomy has more than one level you can experiment with this optional parameter depending on how you assign terms to your items. If you leave it out children will be included in the results.

Also, if some items in your Media Library do not have any terms assigned you may not get the results you expect. This earlier topic has more information:

MLA Gallery with items without category

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have problems or further questions regarding the above suggestions. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.

Thanks for trying my suggestions and posting your update.

Since the word “Personal” doesn’t appear in the shortcodes above I am guessing that there is some sort of syntax or punctuation error in the code you entered. For example, you might have curly/smart quote characters in place of the plain quote characters around the parameter values, or an HTML escape character in place of the “greater than” symbol.

Are you using the “Text” tab of the editor, not the “Visual” tab?
Have you looked carefully for the errors I mentioned?

The some-term value is a placeholder for the slug of the term you want to exclude from the results. For example, if you assigned terms like “Cat”, Dog” and “Mouse” and you want to exclude mice, you would code

'terms' => array ( 'mouse' ),

You can find the Slug values for your terms on the taxonomy edit screens, e.g., the Media/Att. Categories screen.

If you still have trouble with the invalid tax_query, can you post the entire source text of your page/post? Thanks for any additional information you can supply.

Thanks for your update with the full text of your testing page. You have encountered a subtle WordPress shortcode=parsing issue that has tripped me up several times in the past.

You have many shortcodes on the page. All but the last one use the normal shortcode syntax with the name and parameters enclosed by square brackets. The last one uses the enclosing syntax, with a separate [/mla_gallery] to close the shortcode.

The problem is that WordPress looks for the [\mla_gallery] first and “matches” it with the first shortcode on the page ( [mla_gallery attachment_category=selfies columns=5 rows=10] ). That “encloses” everything between the two and so “Personal” is interpreted as a shortcode parameter, which fails.

The “Invalid mla_gallery tax_query = ‘Personal’” message is misleading. I’ve never found a good way to fix that and I regret the confusion it caused.

If you move your last shortcode up to the top of the page so the [/mla_gallery] closes it properly all should be well. Let me know if that works for you.