Outputting custom field on home.php not outside of blog list

by

I have two issues above that are related.

  1. php the_title() is outputting the most recent blog post title on the blog list page within my banner (or creating a banner for each blog title on the list page depending on the described circumstance).

  2. My advanced custom field used to insert an img url into the background attr of some inline styling is acting the same.

From what I have gathered, both of these issues are caused because the index (blog list) page does not have a $page_id or something to that effect. This make since because it isn’t technically a page I guess.

for the blog title I used:

<?php $blog_title = get_the_title( get_option('page_for_posts', true) ); ?>
<h1><?php echo $blog_title; ?></h1>

This retrieved the title for the page_for_posts

As far as using an advanced custom field (or regular custom field?) on the index page, same issue but different solution:

<?php 
$page_id = ( 'page' == get_option( 'show_on_front' ) ? get_option( 'page_for_posts' ) : get_the_ID );
?>

and then

<section class="page_banner inner_banner" style="background: url(<?php the_field('banner_image', $page_id); ?>) center center no-repeat;">

And this worked.

I feel kind of foolish trying to explain something I only slightly understand so if someone could make this more understandable I will choose your answer as correct.