display text based on category in wordpress - php

Question

how can i solve the following problem. Basically I want to show different sub headings based on the wordpress category being used.
this is the following code:
$categ = the_category(' ');
if($categ == 'News'){
$second_header = " secondry header displayed here";
}else{
$second_header = "Error";
}
?>
<h2> <?php the_category(' '); ?></h2>
<p> <?php echo $second_header; ?></p>
Right now this is not working, instead of checking against the text 'news' is there any way to check against the category id?
thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use the following to store the current category id:
<?php $catID = the_category_ID($echo=false);?>
The echo false stops any echo on the page and stores the variable. You can then do the following:
<?php
$categ = the_category_ID($echo=false);
if($categ == 1)
{
$second_header = " secondry header displayed here";
}
else
{
$second_header = "Error";
}
?>
<h2> <?php the_category(' '); ?></h2>
<p> <?php echo $second_header; ?></p>
Alternatively to this you could also use the following (as I believe the_category_ID is now deprecated http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_category_ID):
$categories = get_the_category();
$categ = $categories[0]->cat_ID;
if($categ == 1)
{
$second_header = " secondry header displayed here";
}
else
{
$second_header = "Error";
}
?>
<h2> <?php the_category(' '); ?></h2>
<p> <?php echo $second_header; ?></p>

Answer 2

Different Text on some Category Pages:
<?php if (is_category('Category A')) : ?>
<p>This is the text to describe category A</p>
<?php elseif (is_category('Category B')) : ?>
<p>This is the text to describe category B</p>
<?php else : ?>
<p>This is some generic text to describe all other category pages,
I could be left blank</p>
<?php endif; ?>
if you need category id you will need to first get category through <?php get_the_category_by_ID( $cat_ID ); ?>
Because the_category_ID is deprecated, then you can do the same with some modification.
More here - http://codex.wordpress.org/Category_Templates