BuddyPress.org

Hi all,
I’ve been looking for a way to make the category archive pages use the featured image of the latest post in that category. After several days of dead ends, I decided to look at the code and found a very easy and simple solution that works like a charm. To save others the frustration, here’s what I did – (make sure you save a backup copy of the functions.php file before starting!)

I’m using the default BuddyPress theme
1. Find: (site root)/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/functions.php
2. In the functions.php file, near line 329, look for: `function bp_dtheme_header_style() {`
3. You’ll see a line that starts with: `if ( is_singular() &&`… and ends with `} else {`
4. What I did was copy that block of code and paste it in right after it, changing the condition from `is_singular()` to `is_archive()` and changing the first `} else {` to `} else if ( is_archive()…`

The new code looks like this:
`
function bp_dtheme_header_style() {
global $post;

$header_image = ”;

if ( is_singular() && current_theme_supports( ‘post-thumbnails’ ) && has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ) {
$image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), ‘post-thumbnail’ );

// $src, $width, $height
if ( !empty( $image ) && $image[1] >= HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH )
$header_image = $image[0];
} else if ( is_archive() && current_theme_supports( ‘post-thumbnails’ ) && has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ) {
$image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), ‘post-thumbnail’ );

// $src, $width, $height
if ( !empty( $image ) && $image[1] >= HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH )
$header_image = $image[0];
} else {
$header_image = get_header_image();
}
`
This works great for me. Hope it works for you!
Maybe this could be added to a future release as an option in the dashboard…