How to get sub-categories to display same look as there parents

Question

so I am trying to use the category.php to do all this, and basically I have 3 main/parent categories,

Dream it. Build it. Get The Hell Out.

and will have many sub-categories under them. What im trying to do is display the title / and related image etc of the parent category through-out the parent and sub-categories so for example : If I am in a sub-cat that is under the parent cat "Dream It", it will still say the title / related styles from the parent. I hope this makes sense.

right now I'm messing with and trying to achieve this like so , here is the code:

<div id="cat-area">
<?php
if (is_category('dream-it'))
{echo '<h1>Dream It.</h1>';}
if (is_category('build-it'))
{echo '<h1>Build It.</h1>';}
if (is_category('get-the-hell-out'))
{echo '<h1>Get The Hell Out!</h1>';}
?>
</div>

But of course when i go into a sub cat, its just blank, could this maybe be achieved by using an else if, or somthing? any help would be amazing! thank you so much!

Answer 1

If you have a single level of subcategories under your main categories, you can just do this:

$category = get_category( $cat );
if( $category->category_parent ):
    $parent = get_cat_name( $category->category_parent );
    echo '<h1>' . $parent . '</h1>';
else:
    echo '<h1>' . $category->cat_name . '</h1>';
endif;