Wordpress: Completely exclude Sticky posts from the Loop

When you are displaying most recent posts in a tab, you do not want the sticky posts to stay sticky. If you do not remove the sticky feature, the recent posts area would be useless as all your sticky posts will crowd this area. This is where query_posts feature comes in handy.

To do this you will need to change your loop to something like this:

<?php
$args = array(
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'ignore_sticky_posts' => 1
);
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post();
?>

This code ignores that a post is sticky and shows the posts in the normal order. Using this code your sticky posts will appear in the loop, however they will not be placed on the top.

Completely exclude Sticky posts from the Loop

If you are using sticky posts in a slider, then sometimes you might want to completely exclude your sticky posts from the loop. All what you have to do is edit your custom loop to match with this:

<?php
$the_query = new WP_Query( array( 'post__not_in' => get_option( 'sticky_posts' ) ) );
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post();
?>