Follow Me on Twitter CTA on Ghost and Wordpress
The other day I read a post on Hacker News about premature optimization in web application development. This was an excellent post in its own right, but one thing that jumped out at me was the call to action from the author to follow him on Twitter at the end of his post. I liked that it was subtle, simple, and effective (I followed him on Twitter). Naturally, I stole this idea for my own blogs. This method uses the Follow Button provided by Twitter. In this post, I will show you how to add your own “Follow Me on Twitter” Call to Action on your own Wordpress or Ghost blog.
Wordpress
I used the Bottom of Every Post Wordpress Plugin because I found that hacking the main wordpress loop caused my CTA to show up at the very bottom of a page rather than at the end of the post content. In addition, I made a small change to this plugin to make sure that it only appears on single posts rather than on the home page. Edit bottom-of-every-post/bottom_of_every_post.php from the Wordpress Plugins Editor and update the method to be:if( is_single() && file_exists( $fileName )){/* open the text file and read its contents */
$theFile = fopen( $fileName, “r”); $msg = fread( $theFile, filesize( $fileName )); fclose( $theFile );
/* detect the old message in code to try and eradicate my name and # showing up on strange websites that are run by lazy people */
if( $msg == “<p>Call for an estimate 724-498-1551<br><a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></p>” ){ $msg = “<p>Thank you for installing the Bottom of every post WordPress plugin. To find out how to change or remove this message, read <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bottom-of-every-post/installation/">the instructions</a>.</p>”; }
/* append the text file contents to the end of
the_content
*/ return $content . stripslashes( $msg ); } else{/* if
the_content
belongs to a page or our file is missing the result of this filter is no change tothe_content
*/return $content; }
is_single()
<p> If you made it this far, you should probably follow me on twitter. :) <a class="twitter-follow-button" href="https://twitter.com/levlaz"> Follow @levlaz</a> </p><script>window.twttr = (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], t = window.twttr || {}; if (d.getElementById(id)) return t; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
t._e = []; t.ready = function(f) { t._e.push(f); };
return t; }(document, “script”, “twitter-wjs”));</script>
I used ghosts code-injection tool to get this to work for every page. I added the following two scripts to the Blog Footer.
<script> article = document.getElementsByClassName('post-content'); child = document.createElement('p'); cta = '<p class="follow"> If you read this far, thank you! Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date on what the fuss is all about.<br />'; link = '<a class="twitter-follow-button" href="https://twitter.com/tralevnet"> Follow @tralevnet</a></p>' child.innerHTML = cta + link; article[0].appendChild(child); </script><script> window.twttr = (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], t = window.twttr || {}; if (d.getElementById(id)) return t; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
t._e = []; t.ready = function(f) { t._e.push(f); };
return t; }(document, “script”, “twitter-wjs”)); </script>
<style> .follow { line-height: 1.5; width: 50%; padding: 15px; border: dashed 1px lightgrey; font-size: smaller; color: #555; font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: bold; }.twitter-follow-button { margin-top: 10px; } </style>
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Just a Little More Context Bro, I Promise, and It’ll Fix Everything from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- The Futzing Fraction from Deciphering Glyph
- Sit On Your Ass Web Development from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- c10kday from daniel.haxx.se
- Pluralistic: AI's pogo-stick grift (02 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Why don't smart watches use USB-C to recharge? from Terence Eden’s Blog
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Pluralistic: Become unoptimizable (20 Aug 2025)
Today's links Become unoptimizable: Twiddle or be twiddled. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Penguins v Microsoft in the EU; Chastity belts are a joke; Austerity breeds Nazis, Yale says, "Prepare for death." Upcoming…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow August 20, 2025Theatre Review: Sluts With Consoles ★★★★⯪
Let's see if this post makes it through the spam filters! Sluts With Consoles is a brilliant two-hander. Girly-twirly pick-me Player One and Gothy just-one-of-the-boys Player Two are locked in mortal - and emotional - combat. They represent the duali…
via Terence Eden’s Blog August 20, 2025Embedding Wren in Hare
I’ve been on the lookout for a scripting language which can be neatly embedded into Hare programs. Perhaps the obvious candidate is Lua – but I’m not particularly enthusiastic about it. When I was evaluating the landscape of tools which are “like Lua, but no…
via Drew DeVault's blog August 20, 2025Generated by openring