blog posts on homepage

Hi

I have the following code to display the blog posts on homepage

<?php
                if (isset($vars['area4']))
                    echo $vars['area4']; //display blog posts
                   
?>

my question is, how can I get the different elements, like author image, blog title, blog date as separate variables? I want to customise the view of the blog display.

I have just started learning ELGG.