For each ID you're excluding, you need a minus sign...

cat=-1,-6,-8

This worked for me. I appreciate this info. if i wanted to exclude additional categories from the featured slider, would it look like this?

cat=-1,6,8

for example? or would there be another way to enter this?

thanks again

To exclude it, don't forget to put the minus (-) in front of the number.

Perfect! Thank you so much.

I don't know if I misunderstood your directions, but instead of showing every category except for the one I specify in that line, it displays only the categories I specify in that line. Which still works for me.

Just put that up in case someone else wanted to replicate this.

To exclude a specific category from the slider (and display everything else), open up "index.php" and replace the following on line 19...

category_name='. $church_slider .'

...with...

cat=-1

*Where "-1" is the ID of the category you want to exclude.

Loving the theme, can't wait for our new site to go live.

Goal: I want to keep my media posts out of the slider

One last issue I'm having is: on the homepage the main posts are also ones that appear in the featured section. I saw elsewhere on the forums where I can hardcode the category in the index.php file, but the category could change and I don't want to have to change that file every time it does.

What I'd really like to know, if there is a way to remove just the featured category. For example if one post was labeled: featured, ministry, media

It would still show the categories ministry and media, but no featured.

OR: if there is way to not specify a "featured" category, let all posts in slider except for one specific category that will work.

Here is a link to our page:
http://reallifefl.com/newsite/