Exclude Featured Post from Custom Query WordPress - php

Question

This is the custom query I'm running to display post from 2 categories.
I have installed WordPress Plugin "Featured Post" but the featured post is not excluding from the displayed list.
<?php
$category_id = get_cat_ID($strReports || $strInsights);
$custom_query = new WP_Query( 'cat=' .$category_id. '&featured=no&posts_per_page=6&order=desc' );
while($custom_query->have_posts()) : $custom_query->the_post();
?>
HTML Content Here
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php wp_reset_query(); // reset the query ?>

Answer 1

Looking through "Featured Post" you can see that it just test against yes value. What feature=yes does is just check a meta field, so I think you can do the reverse way to achieve what you want, like this:
$args = array(
'cat' => $category_id,
'posts_per_page' => 6,
'order' => 'DESC', // since order default value is already DESC you can remove this line
'meta_query' => array(
'relation' => 'OR',
array(
'key' => '_is_featured',
'value' => 'yes',
'compare' => '!=',
),
array(
'key' => '_is_featured',
'value' => 'foo', // Prior to WP 3.9 we have to provide any non-empty string here
'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS',
),
) ,
);
$custom_query = new WP_Query($args);
Hope it helps!

Answer 2

your'e running an invalid argument on get_cat_ID.
should be something like this:
<?php
$cat_names = array('Cat_Name1', 'Cat_Name2');
$category_Name = implode(',', $cat_names);
$args = array(
'category_name' => $category_Name,
'posts_per_page' => 6,
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'featured',
'value' => true,
'compare' => '!=',
),
),
);
$custom_query = new WP_Query( $args );
while($custom_query->have_posts()) : $custom_query->the_post();
?>
<?php the_title();?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php wp_reset_query(); // reset the query ?>

Answer 3

create your custom query and add filter.
function SearchFilter($query){
$query=" SELECT Distinct SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS p.* FROM `$wpdb->posts` as p left join `$wpdb->postmeta` as m on m.post_id=p.ID "
." left join `$wpdb->term_relationships` as r ON (p.ID = r.object_id) "
." left join `$wpdb->term_taxonomy` as x ON (x.term_taxonomy_id = r.term_taxonomy_id) "
." left join `$wpdb->terms` as t ON (t.term_id = x.term_id AND x.taxonomy='category') "
." WHERE p.post_type = 'post' AND p.post_status = 'publish' "
." AND t.term_id='$idcategorie' "
return $query;
}
add_filter( 'posts_request', 'SearchFilter' );