I do not want the latest obituary posts showing up in the Recent Posts sidebar widget on the left.
http://larchmontgazette.com/wp27/

I want to be able to exclude obituaries and maybe some other categories, in the future, from the sidebar widget. I tried the Advanced Category Excluder plugin, but it didn't do a thing for me. I don't see any other likely plugins when I search the Wordpress plugin directory.

Help!

Use one instance of the PHP code widget http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget/ and inside the widget put:

PHP Code:

<ul>
<?php
    $recentPosts = new WP_Query();
    $recentPosts->query('showposts=5&cat=-XX,-YY,-ZZ');
?>
<?php while ($recentPosts->have_posts()) : $recentPosts->the_post(); ?>
    <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>

In showposts=5&cat=-XX,-YY,-ZZ replace 5 with amount of posts and XX, YY and ZZ with the ID's of the categories that should be excluded

I got it working, thanks!

Very nice.

You're the best!

That's kinda funny, I just googled for this and found my own post

Mirrors within mirrors.