Twitter Cards for Pelican

This plugin adds the ability to generate a Twitter card automagically upon every make html command. It takes a little bit of effort to set-up due to the fact that templates and themes can vary wildly from implementation to implementation.

The minimal requirements for a functioning Twitter card are:

• Type of card - summary by default
• URL of the content
• Title of the content
• Description of the content

See: TODO.md for a list of items I will be working on to improve this plugin

Step 1

• Go to https://dev.twitter.com/cards to see what this is all about.

Step 2

• Integrate this plugin - The meat and potatoes of it all...

In pelicanconf.py add:

    #=============
    # Twitter Card
    #=============
    # https://dev.twitter.com/cards
    TWITTER_CARD_USE = (True) # (False)
    TWITTER_CARD_SITE = ''  # The site's Twitter handle like @my_blog
    TWITTER_CARD_SITE_ID = ''  # The site's Twitter ID
    TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR = '@m<yourhandle>'  # Your twitter handle like @monkmartinez
    TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR_ID = ''  # The site creator's id
    GRAVATAR_URL = ''

If you use Jinja's includes pattern Ie. _includes\pathtohtml.html use the following tag in your templates header area.

    {% if article %}
      {% if TWITTER_CARD_USE %}
        {% include '_includes/twitter_card.html' %}
      {% endif %}
    {% endif %}

Then create and paste this code into twitter_card.html

    {% if TWITTER_CARD_USE %}
        <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
        <meta name="og:url" content="{{ SITEURL }}/{{ article.url }}">
        {% if TWITTER_CARD_SITE_ID %}
            <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_SITE_ID }}">
        {% elif TWITTER_CARD_SITE: %}
            <meta name="twitter:site" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_SITE }}">
        {% endif %}
        {% if TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR_ID %}
            <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR_ID }}">
        {% elif TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR: %}
            <meta name="twitter:creator" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR }}">
        {% endif %}
        <meta name="og:title" content="{{ article.title[:70]|e }}">
        <meta name="og:description" content="{{ article.summary[:200]|striptags }}">
        {% if GRAVATAR_URL %}
            <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="{{ GRAVATAR_URL }}">
        {% endif %}
    {% endif %}

To use this plugin with macros, use the following macro tag in the head portion of your template. The tag below assumes you have an article_macros file where you store/define macros.

    {% if article %}
    {{ article_macros.twitter_card }}
    {% endif %}

Then add the following macro to your article macros or wherever it makes sense:

    {% macro twitter_card %}
    {% if TWITTER_CARD_USE %}
        <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
        <meta name="og:url" content="{{ SITEURL }}/{{ article.url }}">
        {% if TWITTER_CARD_SITE_ID %}
            <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_SITE_ID }}">
        {% elif TWITTER_CARD_SITE: %}
            <meta name="twitter:site" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_SITE }}">
        {% endif %}
        {% if TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR_ID %}
            <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR_ID }}">
        {% elif TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR: %}
            <meta name="twitter:creator" content="{{ TWITTER_CARD_CREATOR }}">
        {% endif %}
        <meta name="og:title" content="{{ article.title[:70]|e }}">
        <meta name="og:description" content="{{ article.summary[:200]|striptags }}">
        {% if GRAVATAR_URL %}
            <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="{{ GRAVATAR_URL }}">
        {% endif %}
    {% endif %}
    {% endmacro %}

Step 3

• Run make html to generate the site.
• Inspect the output and to be sure twitter meta data was generated successfully
• Push the site to your host

Step 4

• Visit https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards/validation/validator to validate. You will need to supply form with a page that has the correct meta data.

• On the validation page click the apply for validation button then ... time.sleep(email_arrival)

• Now try it out!