How to get an article description or excerpt within Expression Engine

Question

I saw in Expression Engine I can use {embed:title} and {site_name} variables, but now I need a variable to pull an excerpt or description of the article itself. Is there such a variable/tag?

Answer 1

ExpressionEngine tags are based solely on custom fields which you yourself have defined. So in the field group for your "articles" channel, you'll have some fields, maybe {article_summary}, {article_body}, {article_image}, etc. To display your summary, just use {article_summary} in your template.

I'm assuming that you're coming from something like WordPress maybe, where every piece of content has the_content() and the_excerpt() ... aside from a handful of global variables, and some fields which are universal to all entries (like {title}, {entry_date}, etc), ExpressionEngine isn't like that. You define what fields you use for each channel - you have complete control.

Answer 2

Here is the actual code you have to include in your EE template.

{exp:channel:entries channel="article" limit="5" dynamic="no"}
        <div class="home_thumb">
        <h1><a href="{title_permalink="post/articles"}">{title}</a></h1>
            <div class="home_thumb_img">
                <a href="{title_permalink="post/articles"}"><img src="{article_image}"></a>
                {if article_content}
                    <p>{article_content}</p>
                {/if}
            </div>
        </div>
    {/exp:channel:entries}