Excluding a category from the homepage

Hello Kriesi!

I’m currently building a blogsite, where the latest posts automatically appear on the homepage. However, there is one category I want to exclude from appearing there, since I already moved it to the sidebar. So now it appears in the grid as well as on the sidebar, and that’s a little redundant. So, I want to make it disappear from the grid.

I’ve tried all sorts of codes and plugins, but nothing so far has worked. When I use plugins and check boxes such as ‘exclude from main page’, nothing happens and the posts from that category are still there. I used different codes I found in this thread, for e.g. index.php and functions.php. Often, I cannot find the right file and/or place to put the code and if I do, it just doesn’t work (nothing changes).

I also tried creating a seperate page with a masonry grid, selected the categories it should be showing, and selected this page as the front- and blogpage. Didn’t work either; all posts just disappeared.

I’m getting the idea that perhaps pieces of code or plugins are conflicting with or overwriting each other. But I don’t know what to do about that and how to make it work.

I’d very much appreciate your help, thanks!