Why 'excluded from display' fields in views are not available in template files? There is a slide show in my website and I implemented it using views_slideshow module. its content type has 2 fields: 1. an address 2. and image. when user clicks on the image it must be redirected to the address. 

this is views-view-fields--VIEWNAME.tpl.php

&lt;?php 
global $base_url;
$address = strip_tags($fields['field_site_link']-&gt;content);
$address = str_replace($base_url,'',$address);
print $address;
?&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;a href="&lt;?php print $address;?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?php print     $fields['field_site_image']-&gt;content; ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt; 


I excluded the field_site_link from display but it is not available in this function. I also tested &lt;?php kpr($fields); ?&gt; and it was still unavailable. How do I can get its content?
If you exclude any field that means you don't want to display that fields.
So obviously that fiels is not avilable to any template for exclude's default behaviour. That field only available as token in views.