What do variables in Blog Broadcast templates do?

Once you've loaded a template when creating or editing a blog broadcast, you may notice some variables or codes that appear in the subject and in both the plain text and HTML message boxes:

To put it simply, these variables fill the content from your blog articles into the blog newsletters sent to your subscribers.

If you're reading this article out of curiosity, that's all you really need to know. But we do frequently get questions about what each of these variables do individually, and the remainder of this article will be dedicated to providing an explanation of each.

What Each of the Blog Broadcast Variables Do

All of the Blog Broadcast variables are taken from the RSS feed of your blog.

Some, such as "{!rss_channel_title}" (the title of your blog) will remain unchanged in your feed and blog newsletter unless a change is made in the blog's settings.

Others, like "{!rss_item_date}" (the date of a published article) will change frequently in your feed and blog newsletter.

Variables that Tend to Stay the Same

{!rss_channel_title}

The title of the blog, taken from within the "<title>" tags just under "<channel>" tag in the RSS feed.

{!rss_channel_description}

The blog's description, if one is found within the "<description>" tags just under "<channel>" tag in the RSS feed.

{!rss_channel_link}

A link to the blog, taken from within the "<link>" tags just under "<channel>" tag in the RSS feed.

Variables that Change for Each Article

{!rss_itemblock} & {!rss_itemblockend}

Not taken from the RSS feed, these variables set the beginning and ending of an item (ie. a blog article found in the RSS feed). You can only use each of these variables once in your blog broadcast template

Any of the variables below must be found between these variables in the subject line and the body portion of the blog broadcast template in order for content to appear.

{!rss_item_title}

The title of a blog article, taken from within the "<title>" tags between the "<item>" tags for each article.

{!rss_item_date}

The published date of a blog article, taken from within the "<pubDate>" tags between the "<item>" tags for each article.

{!rss_item_description}

The content or description of a blog article, taken from within the "<description>" tags between the "<item>" tags for each article.

Whether a short description or full article appear here will depend upon the settings of your blog software. Typically this is a short excerpt of the first part of your blog article. If interested, read more on how you might set your blog to publish full article content to your RSS feed.

{!rss_item_content}

The full content of a blog article, taken from within the "<content>" tags between the "<item>" tags for each article. This will typically include the full HTML and images from your blog post. AWeber templates use {!rss_item_description} by default to only include a post excerpt, simply replace "description" with "content" in your template and you can include the full blog post.

{!rss_item_link}

A link to a blog article, taken from within the "<link>" tags between the "<item>" tags for each article.