A few days ago, I was thinking of excluding the Asides category from my RSS feed since this category is mostly about personal stuff and I also assume that most of the subscribers aren’t interested to read it. I did a little bit of research and found a way of excluding specific categories from RSS feeds.
First thing you need to do is identify the ID of the category that you want to exclude from your feeds. You can do that by going to your Admin panel, then Manage > Categories and there you’ll see all the ID’s for the different categories. In my case, the category I want to exclude from my feed is the Asides category and it has 23 as it’s ID. Since I’m using Feedburner, I’ll have to edit the original feed source.
Original feed URL:
http://jaypeeonline.net/feed/
Edit feed URL to:
http://jaypeeonline.net/feed?cat=-23
Adding another category:
http://jaypeeonline.net/feed?cat=-23&cat=-24
The last bit of data specifies which category or categories you want to exclude from the feed. You can exclude any category of your choice from your blog’s feed and you can use this even if you’re not using Feedburner as this should work for any type of feed. I’m not 100% if this procedure works. If you decide to try it, any type of feedback or comments would be appreciated.
Also, I don’t think everyone has a need for this but hopefully it would be helpful to those who plan to do it or have been looking for a way to do so.
Written by 
*Don't forget to verify your subscription by clicking the link on the email that Feedburner will send you.*
June 4th, 2010 at 10:39 PM
Hi Thanks for sharing. I publish an email newsletter from RSS, created a directory and published a linked and sent out this stuff to my newsletter. Now I can exclude all the directory categories. It will be a few.
June 2nd, 2010 at 7:13 PM
fantastic. thanks for the great tip. worked perfectly and so easy…
May 9th, 2010 at 7:27 AM
Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you for a such simple explanation.
January 11th, 2010 at 11:43 PM
Oh this is brilliant, thankyou. Worked like a charm.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:24 AM
Such an easy but brilliant tip! Thanks!
August 30th, 2009 at 9:05 AM
Brilliant tip – and just what I needed. I want to exclude a category from my feed so that I don’t bombard readers with a big site update I’m about to do.
Thanks
.-= Clare Swindlehurst´s last blog ..Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit Finally Opens =-.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 AM
Thank you for sharing this tip, it saved me a lot of work. While I was working on the “cat=” query I found out that the best way for excluding categories is to put all the categories comma separated.
This is the way you suggest:
http://jaypeeonline.net/feed?cat=-23&cat=-24
This is the wordpress standard:
http://jaypeeonline.net/feed?cat=-23,-24
And, by the way, here‘s an explaination of how to find out the category’s id.
Hope this comment helps.
Bye.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:51 AM
Jaypee, thanks for the reply. I have tried to exclude 3 categories… I didn’t work for me. Probably I did smth wrong. I have chosen another option – editing function.php file, as far as i remember
Kolias last blog post..Зміна клімату – 10 фактів, які має знати кожен.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:10 PM
@Saimatkong – Glad to hear that. Sama sama. :D
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 PM
hey, it works for me. thanks.
saimatkongs last blog post..Show will go on for rock star Avril Lavigne on Aug 29
July 21st, 2008 at 10:55 AM
@Kolia – You’re welcome! How many categories do you want to exclude from your feed? It should work if you followed the format for adding categories. You also need to check if you got the category numbers right. Let me know if you’ve fixed it or if the format still doesn’t work. Thanks for sharing! :)
July 21st, 2008 at 10:53 AM
Thanks for this tip but I’ve got a little problem with it
it works only with one category excluded
what could be a reason?
Kolia Shlapaks last blog post..10 ?по?обів витрачати гроші з думкою про природу
February 9th, 2008 at 10:45 AM
@Tobi – Yes, this is muchh easier than using a plugin. But both have their advantages and disadvantages. You’re most welcome! Thanks for dropping by and leaving comment. :D
February 9th, 2008 at 10:43 AM
Wooa… this is really easy. What a easy way to exclude pays entries from the feed. Thats cool. Thats really simple and cool.
Thanks you very much for this information… its absolutely unneccessary to build any plugins, this is much easier as jhay mentioned ;)
Tobi’s last blog post..Feedst Du schon oder fav’st Du noch?
May 8th, 2007 at 5:40 PM
@Shari – I see, it’s good to know that it works.
@jhay – I didn’t know that there was a plugin for this, anyways, it’s always good to have another option.
@Dre – You’re welcome! Glad to know you found it useful. :D
May 8th, 2007 at 9:14 AM
This is very useful. Thanks for sharing ;)
May 7th, 2007 at 6:28 PM
I think I came across a plugin once that controls which categories appear in your feeds. Forgot the details though, but your tips is as simple as opening the fridge. ;)
May 7th, 2007 at 3:02 PM
It works, I think. I’ve been kind of using it. ;)
May 7th, 2007 at 10:36 AM
@trench – You’re welcome! Let me know if it works.
May 7th, 2007 at 4:20 AM
I might just have to do this. Thanks for the tip JP.