Twitter Share Count for a WordPress Post

Updated on June 5, 2021

Of course this method has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

It doesn’t require to create an application in your social media account.
Doesn’t increase your website page load time.
Shows the count number changes immediately, just after clicking the button, can be beautifully animated.

Disadvantages:

Counts shares only since installed

You can find live demo of «Tweet» button with the count at the bottom of this post.

Step 1. Custom Tweet Button

Insert this code to the place where you want to display your «Tweet» button. Just to remind you – this is only for WordPress.

<?php
	$post_id = $post->ID;
	$title = get_the_title( $post_id );
	$link = get_permalink( $post_id );
	$min_count = 1; // how much number to show if there are no tweets to the post yet
	$count = ( $count = get_post_meta( $post_id, 'post_tweets', true ) ) ? absint( $count ) : $min_count;
?>
<a href="http://twitter.com/share?text=' . $title . '&url=' . $link . '" title="Tweet" onclick="window.open(this.href, this.title, \'toolbar=0, status=0, width=548, height=325\'); return false" target="_parent" class="misha-tweet" data-id="' . $post_id . '" rel="noopener noreferrer">
	Tweet <span>' . $count . '</span>
</a>

Line 2 is the most important — it is where we get ID of the post. There are different ways of obtaining post ID, depending on your situation, more info you can find here.

2. Send AJAX

You need jQuery for this. It is simple – just include the jQuery script before this code.


jQuery( function( $ ){
	var ajax_url = 'http://your-website.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php';
	$('.misha-tweet').click( function(){ // after clicking Tweet button
		var tweetbutton = $(this),
		    post_id = tweetbutton.attr( 'data-id' ); // get Post ID
		
		$.ajax({ // send the info to your server that the Tweet button has been clicked and where
			type:'POST',
			url:ajax_url,
			data:{'post_id' : post_id, 'action' : 'tweet'},
			success:function( data ){
				tweetbutton.find('span').text( data ); // return and display the result count
			}
		});
	});
});

3. Increase the Count and Return Result

The code for your current WordPress theme functions.php file.

Please note, that this code has simple IP protection as well — if the same user clicks the button twice or more times, the count won’t be increased.

function misha_tweet(){

	$min_count = 1; // how much number to show if there are no tweets to the post yet
	$count = ( $count = get_post_meta( $_POST['post_id'], 'post_tweets', true ) ) ? absint( $count ) : $min_count;

	// if current user IP address == the IP of the previous user who clicked the button, skip 7-10 lines of code 
	if( get_post_meta( $_POST['post_id'], 'post_tweets_latest_ip', true ) != $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] ) {
		$count++;
		update_post_meta( $_POST['post_id'], 'post_tweets', $count );
		update_post_meta( $_POST['post_id'], 'post_tweets_latest_ip', $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] );
	}

	echo $count;

	die();
}
 
add_action('wp_ajax_tweet', 'misha_tweet');
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_tweet', 'misha_tweet');

# WordPress

Misha Rudrastyh

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