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User Defined Global Variables
Custom, user-defined global variables can be created for use in any Template. In the Control Panel > Templates page, click the Global Variables link at the top of the page.
User-defined global variables can hold any static information. These variables can be useful for things like site header, footers, copyright notices, etc. Since these variables can go in any template it makes the information very portable and simple to update.
Once you've created a variable you can use it in any template simply by surrounding the variable name with curly braces. For example, if you create a variable called "copyright", you'll use it in your template this way:
{copyright}
Important: You cannot give a user-defined global variable the same name as an existing variable. This includes variables native to ExpressionEngine such as other Global Variables. Please see the list of reserved words for details.
Note: User-defined global variables are not run through the template engine, so you cannot place EE Tags, PHP, or variables inside them. Also note that Global Variables are one of the last things parsed in your Templates. This means that you cannot use a Global Variable as the value for an EE Tag parameter. For instance, if you had a Global Variable called "special_weblog", the following would not work:
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="{special_weblog}" limit="10"}