So i found this helpful plugin for wordpress that allows categories or posts to be excluded from the front page, feeds, search, and archives. It can achieve this by either including categories by checking them, or excluding categories by checking them. same applies for pages, and tags. I personally used the tags feature, so now i have tags such as exclude-post, exclude-front, and exclude-feed. this gives me the best control over where a post may end up, say this one, i want it to appear in my list, and also under tech, but not on the main page, where as a nother day i may want a tech category post to appear on the front page, so by not excluding the tech category altogether i can still have really intersesting posts be shared.
so for furture reference to myself, this is how i have the settings:
exclude categories: front, archive, search, feed are all set to exclude, and the categories excluded are none at this stage.
exclude tags: front, archive, search, feed are all set to exclude and the exclude-post tag has front and feed checked, exclude-front has front checked, and exclude-feed has feed checked.
That’s it for my settings. obviously the many other different options are useful depending on the needs of yourself or your client. so well done to the author of this handy plugin