Make Different Header Image for Each Category

Refer: WordPress conditional tag: in_category

Which image the header or a banner image under the category title, both of these, would require you to get “under the hood” of the theme, you would need to know a little php and css it cannot be done from admin setup.

You would need to create a child theme for your changes, create a functions.php add a function to return the image then edit category.php or header.php to display the image.

I see you can already change the headers on pages, so you need a page of posts template added to the theme, then change to category pages in the menu.

As the theme is a free download, if you are not comfortable in doing the changes you could consider hiring someone, or add a project on people per hour, it should not cost much at all.

Regards

David

Okay David, Thank-you very much for your reply. Yes i would be looking to change the Banner image on each category. I want to go “under the hood” rather than pay someone else. I need to do it myself to keep the creative juices flowing, and i NEED to learn this stuff. Anyway, i have already made a child theme. You said to make a functions.php file. I’ve searched some forums and cant figure out how to do this. I have my child theme activated but the only mention of functions.php is in my editor when i’m in my parent theme. So first things first, How do i make a new functions.php file and will it appear to the right of the editor in blue under “styles”? i would assume i need to go into /cpanel and into my themes folder and add a new file from notepad++. Should i copy the functions.php file from the parent theme? sorry… This may take time but please be patient, once i get the basics of adding code and styles i should be able to teach myself some more. I just need to get over this hump cuz as of now, code = greek to me.

okay David, i believe i successfully made the functions.php file. I looked in forums and the file says

`<?php
// Lets declare the name of our child theme
$themename = “John Stamos Rules”;`

I have no idea if this is right but i uploaded it to my child theme in /cpanel and it now appears on the right of the code text box when i go to Appearence>Editor in my child theme. Please ignore the theme name it came from extreme frustration in trying many themes.

Am i at least on the right track?

Hi John,

Adventure Child Theme Files:

The whole file here functions.php

Search for Digital Raindrops to find the Changes in header.php

The whole child Theme stylesheet file style.css

And here is the Child Theme Download I created for proof of concept.

How it works is quite simple?
It looks to see if the post is a category post, if it is it finds the first post that has a header image (featured image), if it finds one it will return the url path and display the image.

All you do is set a header as a featured image one of the oldest posts in each category!!

The Function for anyone else can be fould in the links above, I will be doing the same for the Twenty Eleven theme.

Mark this resolved it it works ok!

HTH

David

If anyone is interested in this solution for twenty eleven, I have packaged it up as a downloadable twenty eleven Child Theme

HTH

David

You’re amazing! I’ve seen so many forums with people asking to do just this but nobody seemed to get a proper answer. This was so easy and works like a charm, i just had to change the aspect ratio of my pics (920X360) and set them to the featured image of the oldest post. Thank-you so much man this has pissed me off for a week.

Hi,
I did change the code slightly in the twenty ten version to find the last post in the category that was the correct width!

if($myposts) {
	foreach( $myposts as $catpost ) {
		if ( has_post_thumbnail( $catpost->ID )
			&& ( $image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $catpost->ID ), 'post-thumbnail' ) )
			&& $image[1] >= HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH ) {
				return  esc_url_raw( $image[0] );
		}
		return '';
	}
}

HTH

Can you mark this one as resolved please.

David