10 minutes later and I just figured it out with trial and error… Just pure guesses and it worked.
Basically I wrote it like this:
<?php $paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
query_posts($query_string . ‘&cat=-7,-5&paged=’ . $paged); ?>
What worked was removing the “amp;” and leaving the “&”…also I placed the “&” in front of the cat.
It was a pure guess…I really have no clue about php. At least it works now.
thanks!!!