wordpress get_title code example

Example 1: wordpress get_date

<?php echo get_the_date( 'l F j, Y' ); ?>

Example 2: wordpress get site title

You are not outputting anything to show. You are only assigning blog name to a variable. You need to echo the content. It should be :

<h1><?php echo get_bloginfo( 'name' ); ?></h1>
Hope this helps :)