Upgrading to WordPress 3.1 brings a new feature set to your WordPress blog. Now self-hosted WordPress users will have “the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.”
In English, Jetpack is a plugin that bundles a number of great features that WordPress.com sites already have. These are particularly good for those just starting out in blogging and those who haven’t already tweaked their blogs extensively. The features include:
- WordPress.com Stats – simple site stats with no additional server load
- Twitter Widget – display the latest twitter updates from a selected user into your theme
- WP.me Shortlinks – if you don’t use Pretty Link Pro (my recommendation), you can still get a bit of its functionality with post/page shortlinks to make sharing easier
- Gravatar Hovercards – shows a pop-up business card or your users’ gravatar profiles in comments
- Sharedaddy – this allows readers to easily share you content on FaceBook, Twitter, and more social sites
- After the Deadline – adds spell, style, and grammar checking to your blog (this might particularly come in handy for my many non-native-English blogger friends!)
- Shortcode Embeds – allows easier (was this hard?) embedding of YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, etc., videos
- LaTeX – mark up your posts with the LaTex markup language, which will mean something to you if, like me, you have über-geeks in your family who need complex equations and such (LaTex has been around forever, but I’ve never seen it referenced in the general blog population before.)
If you want to employ Jetpack on your site, it’s simple.
- On top of virtually every page in your admin area, there is a long blue banner giving a shout out to Jetpack. Click on the “Learn More” button.
- Click on the Connect to WordPress.com button.
- From that point, follow the onscreen directions. Either you’ll be sent directly to the “Authorize Jetpack” button page, or you’ll be given the option to either login to your WordPress.com account or set up a new one.
- When the installation is complete, you’ll be sent back tot the Jetpack configuration page where you can configure some of the features.
More features for the WordPress Jetpack are in the works.
What do you like about the new WordPress Jetpack? How have you used it?
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve totally been wondering what all this JetPack non-sense was about, but I haven’t taken the time to click through on the dashboard! Thanks for providing this quick rundown. I think with the Twitter Widget and Hovercards functions I’ll have to opt-in for this. I’ll check in with my thoughts on it there after.
After reading this article we are tempted to install wordpress 3.1 and will let you know how is it.
This is indeed a great way for Wordpress to ensure that hosted and non-hosted blogs receive the same treatment.
Another really great improvement. Thumbs Up
Timmy recently posted…3 easy tips that will increase your website traffic
Getting microformats into your posts (such as LaTex) is a great way to get them noticed and indexed by search engines.
I haven’t tried the Jetpack plugin yet. I’m excited to see how that works. I really need to upgrade to try these new features out. Thanks for the info.
Great info here for wordpress users. This post made me realize that I haven’t been taking full advantage of all the features available in wordpress. I’m forwarding this link to my blogging pals who use wordpress. Thanks
Greg
I’ve been a fan of Wordpress for years now. And here I thought that I was already getting all of the perks possible from installing the software on my own domain…
Sonny recently posted…Design a Fathers Day Card in Adobe Photoshop
excellent plug-ins set
I think with the Twitter Widget and Hovercards functions I’ll have to opt-in for this. I’ll check in with my thoughts on it there after.
It was about time Wordpress allowed the embeding of video as standard. Most of the plugins I had dealt with were rubbish and barely worked.
Alex recently posted…Join our Affiliate scheme!
a good one!
and yeah,jetpack is a good bunch of useful tools…
abejith recently posted…Google Webmaster Tools
good stuff……i will surely upgrade to this one.
Thank you for great tips. Internet is so filled with multiple tools – hard to identify what actually works
Jason Mitchev recently posted…Virginia Beach Dentist Choices Guide
I really like the gravatar hovercards and it lets you provide more information about your loyal viewers and also helps you point out new users.
But isn’t it just a collection of some plugins?
Arup Basak recently posted…Reuse Old Mobile Phone Battery for LED lighting
Indeed cool feature. At the moment I only use the stats they provide, and I think they are really simple to use and offer some clear information about traffic. In the future when I’ll have more time I’ll explore the other features it brings. It sounds very promising.
John recently posted…Tasty Spaghetti and Meatballs
I think with the Twitter Widget and Hovercards functions
Jetpack is great and all, but am I the only one that can’t get the proofread stuff to work? My spelling and grammar are something awful and I need all the help I can get.
thank you for that informative post
Is there also something like this for joomla? I usually use Joomla, but I’m thinking about wordpress!
Wimdevos, I don’t know.
A few years ago I spent a couple of months testing out Joomla. I know some people love it, but I found it so non-intuitive and cumbersome that I knew it wouldn’t be a good fit for my clients. My clients want to disseminate information — through blogging and/or static sites — not tinker with code and mess with the technical side. After making that determination, I abandoned my Joomla training era.
Let me check this plugin. Hope this helps for our new online business. Thanks for the info.
I have been using the latest update but didn’t realize that it had so many nifty tools. Must try them out
Mainly, what I use is the WordPress stats features of the Jetpack plugin. For me, this feature alone makes this plugin worth it already. It allows me to track everything as far as traffic is concerned. Its main display provides me with my daily stats page.
Everybody was curious to about Wrodpress Jetpack and thankfully you gave the whole description related to Jetpack, thanks for sharing this information with us.
Arjun Rai recently posted…Oil and Gas Recruitment Agencies
Great plugin, I would also recommend this plugin for anyone who is using WordPress.
Ron recently posted…The Basic Tips for Finding Jumper, Bonce House, And Jump House Rental in San Jose
I installed jetpack last night.
I like the hovercards. They’re the bomb!
I don’t like [the looks of] those little share buttons, and can’t figure how to change them and make them match my theme.
I’d prefer those share buttons live in the widget column, and nowhere else, but… when copying the information from source code, pasting into widgets where it belongs, nothing shows up unless the share buttons are activated for the page/post/whatever… defeats the point. There’s no place to put the share buttons in widgets from the JP admin. Additionally, I think the share scripts increase loading time.
I may have to get along without those buttons…
stone recently posted…stone wrote a new post, 2011 winter photos
I’ve been trying out Jetpack on a few blogs now since its release and I don’t think much of it. It’s simply a bundle of plugins that I already have or don’t need.
Perhaps it will get some features that will make it useful. Until then I’ve disabled it.
I use Jet pack on my site, and really like the stats
ccC recently posted…Man Survives 2 months Trapped in his Snow Covered Car
The Twitter Widget seems very cool. It’s always nice to be able to plug your tweets into your site instead of just being able to direct people to your Twitter page.
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