Add Reading Time to Ghost & Webflow

A built-in theme helper for Ghost, and a custom-code embed for Webflow.

Ghost: use the built-in reading_time helper

Ghost themes have a native Handlebars helper for this — no plugin needed. In your theme's post-card.hbs or post.hbs template, add:

{{reading_time}}

This outputs a string like "5 min read" automatically calculated from the post's content by Ghost core, with no configuration required. Place it near {{published_at}} and {{authors}} in your byline markup.

Webflow: no native field, use an embed

Webflow CMS has no built-in reading-time calculation. Add an Embed element inside your CMS Collection Page template with a small script that reads the visible word count of your rich-text field and computes minutes client-side:

<span id="rt"></span>
<script>
  var words = document.querySelector('.rich-text-block').innerText.trim().split(/\s+/).length;
  document.getElementById('rt').textContent = Math.ceil(words / 238) + ' min read';
</script>

Replace .rich-text-block with your actual CMS rich-text field's class name. Because this runs client-side after page load, it won't appear in the initial HTML — acceptable for a UX nicety, but if you want it crawlable for SEO purposes, consider a Webflow logic/CMS field calculated at publish time instead.

Verifying either implementation

Paste the same post's plain text into the ReadMetric calculator to confirm your Ghost or Webflow output matches — both should land close to a 238 WPM estimate.