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How to Add Links as Content Cards in WordPress

Do you like how social media sites like Facebook and Twitter show link previews when you paste a link in your status?

Well, your visitors might appreciate it, too!

Luckily, WordPress offers a similar feature that automatically converts links into content cards when they’re from a supported website.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add links as content cards in WordPress.

How to add links in WordPress as content cards

What Is a Content Card?

A content card allows you to display a summary of the link you share on your site. It works very similarly to Twitter Cards or Facebook Link Preview.

You can think of it as embedding a tweet or embedding a video into your content, except now, you’re embedding articles. Just like the image in the preview below:

Content card embed

Without further ado, let’s take a look at how content cards work in WordPress.

How to Embed a Link as Content Card in WordPress

Generally, there are 2 methods for embedding a link as a content card in WordPress: copying and pasting the URL and using the embed block.

Method 1. Copy and Paste the URL

By default, WordPress allows you to easily embed links as content cards from supported websites. These supported websites refer to all WordPress-powered blogs, including your own site.

To embed links as content cards, simply copy and paste the URL inside your page or post’s block editor.

Then, WordPress will automatically convert it into a content card.

Content card preview in WordPress

Method 2. Use the Embed Block

Another way to add a link as a content card is by adding the Embed block in the block editor.

To do this, you’ll want to open the page or post’s block editor. Then, simply click the ‘+’ button and choose the Embed block.

Embed block

You can now paste the URL of the blog post into the block’s field. Once done, go ahead and click the ‘Embed’ button.

WordPress will then automatically fetch the metadata for the URL and convert it into a content card.

Adding link in embed block

How Do Content Cards Work?

By default, WordPress uses oEmbed technology to fetch metadata information from websites that support oEmbed formats.

All WordPress websites support the oEmbed protocol out of the box. This means you can embed links from a typical WordPress website as a content card on your site.

Other than WordPress websites, you can also embed content from many popular websites that already support oEmbeds.

Other WordPress Embeds

For instance, you can embed YouTube videos instantly by simply pasting a video URL.

Here’s what it might look like on your block editor:

Embedding YouTube content

Note: Facebook and Instagram embeds don’t work out of the box on WordPress websites. You’ll need the free Smash Balloon Facebook plugin to easily embed content cards from those platforms.

For more on this topic, you can see our guide on how to embed Instagram content in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily embed links as content cards in WordPress. Next, you may also want to see our guide on how to cloak affiliate links or how to add title and nofollow to insert link popup in WordPress.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

21 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
    Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
    Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes.
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  2. Brent Wilson

    This plugin has been removed. Is there no alternative?

    • WPBeginner Support

      We do not have a specific alternative at the moment, we will be sure to keep an eye out for one we would recommend.

      Admin

  3. Dave

    This is really bad advice.. the plugin has some MAJOR flaws and appears to be abandoned…

    • WPBeginner Support

      Thank you for letting us know, we’ll be sure to look into updating this article from 2015 with a new plugin as we’re able :)

      Admin

  4. Jeff Whitmore

    Got the plugin to work, then when I published, BAM. Blank page except for the words “The site is experiencing technical difficulties. Please check your site admin email”

  5. Lazarus

    Hallo,

    The plugin doesn’t work with WordPress 5.0.3. Is there any patch or the new version?

  6. Dennis Herman

    This is great. Exactly what I was looking for. I’ll give it a try.

  7. yair

    i did the content card but the imag is blank …
    do ineed to install the face book open grafe plaug in first?

    • WPBeginner Support

      If the link you added with content cards was for one of your own sites, then you need to install Facebook open graph. If it was an external site, then the site needs to be using Facebook open graph. You can also set a default fallback image in the plugin settings, this image will be used when no image is found.

      Admin

  8. Steve Media

    Now if I can only find a good solution to export firefox bookmarks, sort by url, pull all sites with “thisdotcom” into one category and all sites with “thatdotcom” into another category.. mass import into wordpress – auto sort by category, date url added – and pull these content cards.. very cool it would be.

    • Arūnas

      Need some help? :)

  9. Avil Beckford

    I did a curated post today, so I tested it with content cards and it works fine. The preview image size is quite large though. Thanks for the post.

    Avil Beckford

  10. Abhishek

    This is what i needed, Thanks.

  11. Rikki

    I am getting the same message. In the list of plugins it says explicitly that the plugin is not compatible with my WP version (which is 4.3.) A glitch?

      • Rikki

        Thank you. I will give it a try then, :-).

  12. fergal walsh

    I would use this plugin but incompatible with latest releases of wordpress :(

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