[thelist] Linux Tar Question

[CDitty]

I am writing a small php script to create a backup of my web server.  Can 
anyone tell me a way (if possible) to exclude directories using tar?  I 
have tried using the following commands, but they give errors.

tar -cf --exclude=stats /home/httpd/html/galore/test.tar 
/home/httpd/html/galore/
tar --exclude=stats -cf /home/httpd/html/galore/test.tar 
/home/httpd/html/galore/

This is the error I get.
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
tar: /home/httpd/html/galore/test.tar: file is the archive; not dumped

Any ideas?
CDitty