A workaround for Wordpress category exclusion.
Today I was working on my custom Wordpress theme and I was trying to exclude a category’s posts from showing up in a certain list, but to still show five items in that list. Excluding the category was easy enough, but let’s say there were two excluded posts, only three list items would show up. This is a known annoyance in Wordpress that happens because somewhere in the nooks and crannies of Wordpress code there is some PHP keeping track and counting little things like this, just to make life harder for all of us.
I read this article, and found it to be a completely acceptable workaround, by using just a few finite, general categories, then using tags (via the Ultimate Tag warrior plugin) to associate meaning to each post.
This is just one way to avoid a headache with this whole Wordpress “counting” situation.
Please let me know if you have a better way, or a way that works for you.