How to create a flexible hero block

So you want to offer your authors the ability to specify a “hero” style header for your entry, but have a fallback for when they don’t want one.

For the purposes of this example, we’ll assume your hero block will have an image, heading, and description.

Let’s set up some fields

Field Name	Field Short Name	Fieldtype
Hero Image	hero_image	File
Hero Heading	hero_heading	Text
Hero Description	hero_description	Text

Now add some code

{exp:channel:entries channel="my_channel" limit="1"}

{if hero_image}
  <div class="hero" style="background-image:url({hero_image});">
      <h1>{hero_heading}</h1>
      <p>{hero_description}</p>
  </div>
{if:else}
    <h1>{hero_heading}</h1>
    <p>{hero_description}</p>
{/if}

...

{/exp:channel:entries}

What we’re doing here is using a conditional {if hero_image} to check if the image exists. If it does, then we output the image as a background image using the style= parameter in the div container. If it doesn’t exist, then we just output our plain heading and description.

That’s it! All you need to do is add some style!

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Originally published by Rob Allen at u.expressionengine.com