Gift Links for Ghost

Let members share paywalled posts with anyone.

Adds a "Gift this article" button to your Ghost site that appears on articles that require paid access. Paying members click the button and get a special gift link they can share. Anyone who visits that gift link can read the full post without an account. Gift links expire after 14 days.

Setup

In Ghost Admin, go to Members and create a new member with the email bot@giftlinks.net. Give it a complimentary subscription to a paid tier.
Enter your Ghost site URL below and click Connect. This sends the bot the sign-in email it needs to read your paywalled posts.

In Ghost Admin, go to Settings → Code injection and paste this in the Site footer:
```
<script src="https://giftlinks.net/client.js" defer></script>
```

How it works

A small script on your site adds a "Gift this article" button to paywalled posts for paying members.

Sharing a post:

A member of your site clicks this button.

→

giftlinks.net verifies & creates linkA unique gift URL is generated and stored.

→

Gift URL copied to clipboardA special link to the post with ?gift=xxxxx on the end.

Opening a gift link:

Visitor arrives at your siteGhost shows the paywall as usual.

→

Script sends token to giftlinks.netThe bot fetches the full post using its comped membership.

→

Full article appears inlineThe script replaces paywall with full post content.

Features

Uses normal links. Gift links are regular links to a post on your site. They just have an extra code on the end. Link previews, analytics, etc should all work as usual.
Multi-use links. A gift link can be shared with multiple people. One link, share it anywhere for 14 days.
Nothing stored on your Ghost server. The client script, tokens, and bot session all live on Cloudflare. Uninstall by removing one line of code injection.
Trustless. Does not require Admin API.

FAQ

What does it cost? The service is free. It's very inexpensive to host. Maybe there will be a Pro version some day, but the basic app will stay free.

Is the source code available? Not yet. Soon!

Does the bot have admin access? No. The bot is a regular comped member. It can only read content a paid subscriber would see.

What happens when a gift link expires? The visitor sees the normal paywalled post with a message the gift link is expired. Nothing breaks.

Can a gift link be shared with multiple people? Yes. A single link works for anyone who opens it for an unlimited number of clicks, until it expires after 14 days.

Can I limit how many times a gift link can be used? Not yet.

How do I uninstall? Remove the code injection line and delete the bot member from Ghost Admin.

Are you doing something sneaky with my content/data? No. See the privacy policy.

More questions? Email me eli@elidickinson.com or find me on Bluesky @eli.pizza

Customizing gift links

Override any user-facing string by setting window.gl4g_strings in Ghost Code Injection before the client script:

<script>
window.gl4g_strings = {
  button_text: 'Share this post',
  gift_banner: 'This article was shared with you by {name}.',
};
</script>
<script src="https://giftlinks.net/client.js" defer></script>

Key	Default
`button_text`	Gift this article
`creating_text`	Creating link…
`loading_text`	Loading gifted article…
`expired_text`	This gift link has expired.
`error_text`	Something went wrong. Please try again.
`created_text`	Gift link created! Copy it below…
`gift_banner`	You’re accessing a gift link. Subscribe… (HTML ok, `{name}` placeholder)
`copy_text`	Copy
`copied_text`	Copied!

CSS: To customize styles, target the .gl4g- prefixed classes in Code Injection. For example, use .gh-content .gl4g-bar for the banner and .gl4g-button for the gift button.