Spectral Web Services
Widgets for Ghost
Making use of the HTML card to add cool interactive functionality to Ghost.
Ghost posts and pages can easily include widgets as part of the post content. If you have a site that'll give you an embed code in an iframe, it'll probably work on Ghost.
If you want that widget to show up on an index page (a page that collects multiple posts together, like your site's front page if you haven't customized it), you'll probably need some customization of your theme to make a spot for it. (Or some really good JavaScript skills to rewrite that part of the layout, but this can cause CLS shifts, which are bad for SEO.)
All these embeds require JavaScript to work. They will not work in email. If you're writing a newsletter for emailing, none of these are the solution you're looking for.
The workaround for newsletters is to put something representing the content (perhaps a static image) and to link it to the actual post on the website, so that when the user clicks it, they go to the post and get the real content. This is somewhat imperfect, and needs its own post one of these weeks.
Ready for some ideas about what to embed? Read on!
Weather
Cathy Sarisky, Ghost Expert
Stocks
Cathy Sarisky, Ghost Expert
Spreadsheets
Cathy Sarisky, Ghost Expert
This post also includes directions for how to break a wide widget out of the Ghost theme grid so that it can use more of the page. Applicable to any wide widget type, not just to spreadsheets!
Media
Cathy Sarisky, Ghost Expert
Cathy Sarisky, Ghost Expert
Widget providers
While I'm here, let me link a few places to look for widgets that aren't free, but that have a nice range of offerings. (If you're still reading in your email client, please don't! The embeds below aren't going to work. Visit the website!)
Elfsight
Elfsight has a huge collection of widgets. The free tier is enough to evaluate whether a widget is not going to work, but not much more than that. Some of the widgets on offer are things that really don't need to be widgets. (Share buttons? Really?) But some things, like the Facebook integration below, are complicated enough that you might decide they were worth paying for:
CommonNinja
Like Elfsight, it's a mix of trivial things you could easily implement with just a little HTML, and huge things like this jobs board:
That's pretty cool. I get a lot of requests for job boards and classifieds. While it's possible to build a Ghost solution (with some limitations), I can see this appealing to some of my clients, especially if they're looking to get something online RIGHT NOW and want to minimize current spending, at the expense of a higher monthly burn.
Wrap-up
Thanks for reading! What other widget types should I test? What other widget providers did I miss? Use the comments below!
Hey, before you go... If your finances allow you to keep this tea-drinking ghost and the freelancer behind her supplied with our hot beverage of choice, we'd both appreciate it!
