Grade A

Ultimate Category Excluder

Name: Ultimate Category Excluder
Rating: 4.2 (77 reviews)
Author: Marios Alexandrou

⤓ Download v1.7 on WordPress.org ↗

by Marios Alexandrouupdated 2025-12-29✨The Quiet Achiever

It hides your categories but might accidentally hide your entire website layout.

HealthyGrowing

76/100

This simple tool handles native categories well but lacks WooCommerce support and may conflict with Elementor.

Loved24/40

Trustworthy13/15

Fair & Honest15/15

Maintained15/18

Momentum9/12

✂️

You might not need this plugin. Its core job is small enough to live in your theme's functions.php.

Show the snippet

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', function ( WP_Query $query ) {
    if ( is_admin() ) {
        return;
    }

    // IDs of categories to exclude.
    $excluded = array( 5, 12, 34 );

    if (
        $query->is_main_query() &&
        ( $query->is_home() || $query->is_archive() || $query->is_search() || $query->is_feed() )
    ) {
        $query->set( 'category__not_in', $excluded );
    }
} );

Keep in mind:Replace the IDs in $excluded with your own category IDs; the plugin provides a settings UI to pick categories without touching code.

More plugins you can skip →

Active installs

~55,000

our estimate · wp.org shows 50k+

→ on track for 60k+in ~1 year

Rating

4.2★

77 ratings

Trend · vs a year ago

+9%

Growing

61 → 67 installs/day

Downloads over time

real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend

2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03

organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median

Growing · +9% in the last year

61/day a year ago→67/day today

Reviews

what people actually say

Ultimate Category Excluder is a simple, well-liked plugin for hiding native WordPress blog categories from various site areas, but it has notable limitations around WooCommerce compatibility, a reported Elementor conflict, and occasional reliability issues.

What people like

+Works as advertised for native WordPress blog categories — excludes them from homepages, search, feeds, etc.×7
+Praised for being simple and easy to use compared to manual PHP solutions.×3
+Can fix theme display issues such as empty spaces left by hidden category posts.

Common complaints

−Does not support WooCommerce product categories — only native WordPress blog categories.×3
−Activating the plugin on an Elementor site changed the site layout to 'Elementor Canvas', stripping headers and footers from all pages.
−Reported to cause a complete loss of organic search traffic after excluding a single category.
−Bug in the admin panel: a PHP warning thrown on the 'Exclude from Search' column when the expected array is null. (since 1.1)
−No bulk-select option to exclude all categories at once; each must be managed individually.
−No support for excluding child categories automatically when a parent category is excluded.
−Plugin settings are managed inside the plugin itself rather than from the native WP categories list, which some users find inconvenient.
−Some users report the plugin simply did not work on their site at all.×2

Review trustReviews look organic

4.19★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.20★
7%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members

Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower

2024-01-162025-04-102026-06-04

5★ reviews1–4★ reviews

All-time ratings · 77 total

5★

4★

3★

2★

1★

Latest reviews · 77 analyzed

2025-12-28★★★★★Not great – too basic mikelidbetter
2025-03-15★★★★★Killed my Elementor menus and footers georgepond
2024-06-29★★★★★It Works!!!!!CyberCobre
2024-02-24★★★★★Add a button to check all categories at once colnago1
2024-01-09★★★★★EXCELLENT – does exactly what I needed JJNW
2022-09-15★★★★★Killed my traffic spreaditunlimited
2022-08-24★★★★★Did not work for me estiedejager
2022-06-01★★★★★Plugin Improvment ptipti231-shot
2022-04-27★★★★★Did the trick consumerista
2022-02-17★★★★★Perfect!woodypad

Releases

recent versions from WordPress.org SVN

2013-09-04v0.9
2013-09-04v0.90
2011-07-07v0.8
2011-07-06v0.7
2011-02-25v0.6

For developers & the curious

the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary above

Download signals

Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.

Baseline · median of last 7 organic days

Prior 7-day baseline

Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days

Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)

+11.5%

Week-over-week organic trend

Review signals

Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.

20%

Max month share · biggest single 30-day window

2.24

Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty

75%

5★ share in analyzed sample

Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity

—

Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo

4.25 → 4.19★

Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered