Beginners Guide on How to Add Twitter Cards in WordPress

Enhancing your WordPress site with Twitter Cards can significantly improve your social media presence and user engagement. Twitter Cards provide images and descriptions that appear on X (formerly Twitter) when someone shares your content.

On WPBeginner, we use this feature to control the appearance of our tweets and boost user interaction. Using Twitter Cards (or X Cards) also makes sure we get credit for our content.

In this article, we will show you how to add Twitter Cards in WordPress, so your tweets can stand out.

Why Use Twitter Cards in WordPress?

Twitter Cards allow you to add a title, summary, image, and video or audio file to your tweet. This way, you are more likely to get more clicks and retweets.

You can see a live example by going to our WPBeginner page on X.

The biggest advantage of having Twitter Cards is that they increase the number of people following your X accounts through content attribution. Often people tweet your links without giving you proper credit.

For example, say @syedbalkhi retweets a post from @wpbeginner without attribution, and other people retweet @syedbalkhi. Then users viewing those retweets are more likely to follow @syedbalkhi than @wpbeginner.

Often content curators do this to keep the tweet lengths short and ensure retweets of their own tweets.

With Twitter Cards, this problem is solved because you get credit to your WordPress website from every tweet that mentions your article.

Now that you know the benefits of Twitter Cards, let’s take a look at how to implement them in WordPress. We will cover two methods and show you how to test and validate your Twitter Cards:

Method 1: Using AIOSEO Plugin to Add Twitter Cards (Recommended)

The easiest way to add Twitter Cards to your website is using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin for WordPress. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin and is used by over 3 million websites.

First, you will need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, follow our step-by-step tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

You can use the free version of AIOSEO as it offers a feature to set up Twitter Cards on your WordPress website.

After the plugin is active, go to your WordPress admin area and navigate to All in One SEO » Social Networks. Then click on the ‘X (Twitter)’ tab and make sure that the ‘Enable X Card’ option is enabled.

Once you enable Twitter Cards, you can change their appearance using different settings.

AIOSEO lets you select the Default Card Type for your content. The plugin will set ‘Summary’ as the default card type, which shows the title, summary, and thumbnail image for your content.

However, you can change it to ‘Summary with Large Image’ from the drop-down menu, and Twitter will show your tweet with a large image.

After that, you need to select the Default Post Image Source. It is the image you want to display on your Twitter Cards.

There are different options to choose from using the drop-down menu. For instance, you can upload or select a default image that will appear in the X (Twitter) Card or select the featured image, attached image, the first image in the content, and more.

Next, add a Default Post X Image, which will be used as a backup in case your content doesn’t have an image.

For instance, if your post image source is a featured image, but the post is missing a featured image, then X will use the default image instead.

Aside from that, AIOSEO offers more options to show additional data like post author and the time it would take to read an article.

There is also an option to set the Default Term Image Source, but you will need AIOSEO Pro or a higher license to use this feature.

Now, if you scroll down, you will see the home page settings for Twitter. The plugin will show a preview of how your home page will look on a Twitter Card.

Under this section, you can change the Card Type and add a Home Page Image.

This is similar to the steps we showed earlier, but the difference is that these settings are for your home page.

Next, enter a Home Page Title and Description that will appear on the Twitter Card.

Once that is done, click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Aside from that, AIOSEO also lets you change the X (Twitter) Card settings for individual posts and pages.

To do that, edit any blog post or page and then scroll down to the AIOSEO Settings in the content editor. Now click on the ‘Social’ tab and select ‘X (Twitter)’.

The plugin will show a preview of your post’s X Card and give you the option to use data from the Facebook tab. It also lets you edit the X title and description.

You can write a new title and description or use smart tags. For instance, if you use the ‘+ Post Title’ tag above the Twitter Title field, then AIOSEO will automatically use your post’s title in the Twitter Card.

After that, scroll down and select the Image Source for your Twitter Card. Use the drop-down menu to select the image you want to display for your post, like a featured image, attached image, first image in content, and so on.

Lastly, you can select the Twitter Card Type from the drop-down menu. By default, AIOSEO will set it to ‘Summary’, but you can change it to ‘Summary with Large Image.’

Next, update or publish your blog post. You have now successfully added Twitter Cards to your WordPress website.

Method 2: Adding Twitter Cards in WordPress (Code Method)

This method requires adding code to your theme or child theme files. Simply open the header.php file or use the WPCode free plugin to add this custom code just before the </head> tag:

<?php
#twitter cards hack
if(is_single() || is_page()) {
  $twitter_url    = get_permalink();
 $twitter_title  = get_the_title();
 $twitter_desc   = get_the_excerpt();
   $twitter_thumbs = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID), full );
    $twitter_thumb  = $twitter_thumbs[0];
      if(!$twitter_thumb) {
      $twitter_thumb = 'http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8eb9ee80d39f13cbbad56da88ef3a6ee?rating=PG&size=75';
    }
  $twitter_name   = str_replace('@', '', get_the_author_meta('twitter'));
?>
<meta name="twitter:card" value="summary" />
<meta name="twitter:url" value="<?php echo $twitter_url; ?>" />
<meta name="twitter:title" value="<?php echo $twitter_title; ?>" />
<meta name="twitter:description" value="<?php echo $twitter_desc; ?>" />
<meta name="twitter:image" value="<?php echo $twitter_thumb; ?>" />
<meta name="twitter:site" value="@libdemvoice" />
<?
  if($twitter_name) {
?>
<meta name="twitter:creator" value="@<?php echo $twitter_name; ?>" />
<?
  }
}
?>

You can change the ‘twitter:card’ value on Line 14 to ‘summary_large_image’ if you want to display a summary card with a large image.

If you don’t know how to work with PHP or running into issues with Method 2, then please use Method 1.

Test and Validate Your Twitter Cards

Before links from your WordPress site start showing Twitter Cards, you need to first check it in the Twitter card validator.

Simply head over to the Card Validator page on the Twitter developers’ website. Enter the URL of any post from your WordPress site and click on the ‘Preview card’ button.

The card validator no longer displays a preview of the tweet, but it does show a log of whether the Twitter card loaded successfully or not.

Expert Guides on Using Twitter With WordPress

Now that you know how to add Twitter cards to WordPress, you may like to see some other guides related to using Twitter with WordPress.

• How to Automatically Tweet When You Publish a New Post in WordPress
• How to Add Twitter Share and Retweet Button in WordPress
• How to Embed Actual Tweets in WordPress Blog Posts
• How to Fix Broken Twitter Card Images in WordPress
• How to Display Author’s Twitter and Facebook on the Profile Page
• Best Twitter Plugins for WordPress (Compared)
• How to Display Recent Tweets in WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Add Your Social Media Feeds to WordPress (Step by Step)

We hope this article helped you add Twitter cards to WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a landing page with WordPress and our expert pick of the must-have WordPress plugins to grow your website.

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