Haisum

@jgreenberg1990 you are very near to your solution you just need to update the key ‘cat’s value to something like

<?php
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;

$args = array(
'posts_per_page' => 4,
'paged' => $paged,
'cat' => -3,-6,-9,place your category with (-) comma separated if multiple here
);

query_posts($args);
?>

For further instructions please follow the Link
Please let me know if this resolve your problem

@apeluis i understand what you are trying to show at your side, for that reason we need check the admin panel. As from the panel there is will be widget of recent posts that will automatically show most recent posts that are added in any category. Well we need to look into the panel for that.
If you want me to look into it then please share your panel, privacy will remain confidential . [email protected]

#yazooda If you don’t found any secondary menu option in your menu then trying adding it manually as it is removed in some child themes, may be your theme is doing the same thing.

Standard way of adding a secondary menu to a theme is as follows.

Add the function to create a new menu opening file functions.php and registering it:

register_nav_menus( array(
    'primary' => __( 'Primary Menu', 'yourtheme'),
    'secondary' => __( 'Secondary Menu', 'yourtheme' ),
 ) );

This brought up a 2nd menu in the Theme Menu options.

Next, add the code to the desired place on your theme file. In this case, it would be added to the footer.

<nav>
    <?php
        wp_nav_menu( array('container_class' => 'menu-footer',
        'theme_location' => 'secondary') ); ?>
</nav>

@thatcentristblog have you tried resetting the permalinks, please tell me your current permalink set in the admin panel of your website, it will reside in the left sidebar under the settings->Permalinks.
If it’s set to dafault then please trying changing it to Post name and then check if the links are functional or not and let me know in problem.

go to plugins directory.
newsletter/widget.php
at the line no 25-30 update the code
Old:
$form .= '<p><input class="newsletter-email" type="email" required name="ne" value="' . esc_attr($options_profile['email']) . '" onclick="if (this.defaultValue==this.value) this.value=\'\'" onblur="if (this.value==\'\') this.value=this.defaultValue"/></p>';

Updated Code:
$form .= '<p><input class="newsletter-email" type="email" required name="ne" value="" placeholder="Email"/></p>';

After that you will see there will be no more warnings in the console.

@romain22 This is due to the bad habbit of the developers, in the newsletter plugin the team has done the same bad thing. If you inspect at the newsletter form wherever you have used in your website at the email input you will see there pre-filled value of input type email with ‘Email’ and when you click at the input you will see it vanishes and as soon you click at any of the other thing other then that particular input you will see the value comes back.

<input class="newsletter-email" type="email" required name="ne" value="' . esc_attr($options_profile['email']) . '" onclick="if (this.defaultValue==this.value) this.value=\'\'" onblur="if (this.value==\'\') this.value=this.defaultValue"/>

They need to use a placeholder for that as for what reason the placeholder attribute is created.
If you want to get rid of that you just need to go to the plugins directory plugins/newsletter/widget.php and in between the line 25 – 30 you will see the above pasted code.

Newsletter Code:

$form .= '<p><input class="newsletter-email" type="email" required name="ne" value="' . esc_attr($options_profile['email']) . '" onclick="if (this.defaultValue==this.value) this.value=\'\'" onblur="if (this.value==\'\') this.value=this.defaultValue"/></p>';

Updated Code:
$form .= '<p><input class="newsletter-email" type="email" required name="ne" value="" placeholder="Email"/></p>';

And then update the file. After that refresh your page you will see automatically the warning is no more.