Customize <header> in category page

Question

I'm working in a blog with a template of my own. When I link to a category page (i.e. mydomain.com/category/mycategory) Wordpress generates this HTML code just after the header.php:

<!-- HTML rendered by header.php -->

<!-- This 2 lines belong to index.php -->
<div id="primary" class="content-area">
  <main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">

<!-- HTML rendered by content.php -->
<header class="page-header">
  <h1 class="page-title">Category: My Category</h1>
</header>
<!-- .page-header --> <!-- this comment is also generated by content.php -->
<div id="post-292" class="grid-item">
  <!-- The rest of content.php -->
</div>

My content.php file is as follows:

<?php
/**
 * The template part for displaying content
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty_Sixteen
 * @since Twenty Sixteen 1.0
 */
?>

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="grid-item">
...

So the question is: where is the <header> tag generated and how can I customize it? I want to change the <h1> rendered content Category: My Category to be just My Category, for example.

Any help or guide is appreciated. Thanks in advance for your answers.

Answer 1

Review the template hierarchy from the Codex to gain a better understanding of what files are read when. This will help you to understand what's called in what situation (tag/category/front-page/etc).

Content.php is never mentioned in the documentation as its not a part of the template hierarchy. Theme developers will use different file names and will reference them within the loop.

Most of the themes by Automattic use this technique to call the various parts to build out the content. Review your index.php, page.php, or post.php to see if content.php is used there.

Answer 2

1. Create another file form header.php and name it like header-{category-name}.php.
2. Do your needed change on header-{category-name}.php.
3. Then in your category.php call this file by get_header( 'category-name' ).
4. If you don't have category.php file then create one by copying the archive.php template then follow the above instruction.

Follow those above steps and you'll get your desired result.