It actually turned out to be a naming issue. Changing the name of the field from “link” caused the field to display the URL.
Thanks for your time and help, John.
Thanks for your help, John. I did a var_dump that returned NULL.
This is a WP Query outside of the Loop. Excuse my not so elegant code as I am a designer, not a developer. The value of the field is a standard URL.
<?php
$args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 8 );
$variable = get_field('link', $post->ID);
$loop = new WP_Query( $args );
while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();
echo '<li>';
echo '<div class="img-container">';
the_post_thumbnail();
echo '</div>';
echo '<div class="news-container">';
echo '<h3>';
echo '<a href="';
the_permalink();
echo '">';
the_title();
echo '</a>';
echo '</h3>';
echo '<p class="date">';
the_date();
echo '</p>';
the_excerpt();
echo '<h4>';
echo '<a href="';
echo $variable;
echo '" />';
echo 'Read More';
echo '</a></h4>';
echo '</div>';
echo '</li>';
endwhile;
?>
Thanks. I was actually using the URL field at first, but also tried the Link field returning a URL. Both are returning empty values.