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Jetpack: Bring WordPress.com Functionality to Your WordPress.org Blog

Posted By Darren Rowse 25th of March 2011 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

jet-pack.pngIn the last week, Automattic (the team behind WordPress) released a nice little WordPress plugin bundle called Jetpack, which gives your self-hosted WordPress.org blog some of the functionality that was previously only available in the hosted WordPress.com-type blogs.

This won’t appeal to all bloggers—especially not those who have been at it for a while and who have researched and installed a wide range of plugins to customize their blogs—but for some it’ll be a great addition to their WP.org blog.

Jetpack aims to give “feature parity” to both types of WordPress blogs, and includes the following features:

  • WordPress.com Stats – a metrics tool
  • Twitter Widget – display latest updates from Twitter
  • Gravatar Hovercards – show pop-up business cards of users’ Gravatar profiles
  • WP.me Shortlinks – a permalink shortening tool
  • Sharedaddy – a sharing tool (shares to Twitter, Facebook etc.)
  • LaTeX – mark up your posts with LaTeX markup language
  • After the Deadline – adds spell, style, and grammar checking to WP
  • Shortcode Embeds – embeds videos easily

Again, many of you will probably have other plugins that do some of this, but for those looking for an easy install to cover all of these plugins, Jetpackcould be a good option. It also looks like other plugins will be added soon.

Further reading: Read the Jetpack launch post.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Hmm… you’re right. I already have plugins that do those things, but definitely a great resource for people who are starting out. :)

  2. Great information Darren. Thanks for sharing

  3. Already have it installed! :) So far I’ve only “unpacked” the stats. Seems they are still working out some “bugs” because sometimes they don’t line up.

    I do have plugins for some of the other things, some I don’t care for. I may look into one or two others that are offered.

  4. I love Jetpack! Installed it as soon as my WordPress Stats seize to function.

  5. Well they say it will reduce the plugins. But if you really look at the code, then there will hardly be any change in the resources consumed up by Jet pack as compared to all separately installed plugins.

  6. Thanks for sharing. I already am using some of these also, but it might be easier to have it handled all by one plugin. I’ll definitely look more into it.

    It would be interesting to see if it really does reduce the resources required vs. the separate plugins.

  7. am good with my current plugins, no reason to use jetpack.

  8. Didn’t know about this one and it sounds like something I could use. Thank!

  9. Great tool for beginners, but as you’ve outlined, if you’ve been at it for a while it’s unnecessary.

  10. That is definitely a very good tool to use. I wish I knew about it when I started up my site. I’m sure this will come in handy with new blogs. I give it two thumbs up! Nice post Darren.

  11. Honestly, with the new glitch WordPress Stats has been having for over a week, I don’t think I’d even try Jetpack out.

  12. I am happy with my current set of plugins. Don’t want to mess with them as they are working great together. But its good to know about Jetpack for future sites. Hopefully by then all the bugs and any other problems with the plugin will be fixed. I think its better to wait for now.

  13. Gravatar Hovercards seems like a cool idea.

    Similar to Google Instant and Yahoo’s latest move to tag along, Gravatar Hovercards seems like a quick way to learn more about someone before leaving the blog you’re reading … might be a nice way to learn more about a lot more people.

  14. Great news. WHich is more user friendly? .com or the .org site? I use the .com and feel it works pretty well.

    • Hi Tom,
      I have used both .com and .org – to me both are user friendly. I moved like most people do to the .org so I could attach an ebook to my autoresponder and build on the business nature of my site.
      If you are interested in an article that I wrote to compare wordpress.com wordpress.org and blogger.
      Please stop by my site and let me know.

      All the best,
      David

  15. Great Information! Thanks for Sharing. For those of us just starting out this will be very useful!

  16. Hi. Jetpack is good for big blogs like yours..but can you suggest something for a multiple installation blog like mine

  17. Damn I already have installed plugins for that but will most definitely use it on my next blog

  18. Here is a similar story

    New from the people at WordPress is Jetpack, a helpful add-on for those who manage their own personal copies of the popular blogging software.

    WordPress is by far the best-known and most-used blog tool around these days, and it comes in two delicious flavors: WordPress.com is a fully hosted service, operated and maintained by the WordPress people themselves. WordPress.org, on the other hand, is there for the control freaks among us – the people who have to have complete control of their own site, right down to the server it’s hosted on. This is the version you download and install yourself, lovingly maintaining it through thick and thin.

  19. Great tool, thanks. I like the opportunity to see live stats right in my dashboard. However, the integrated grammar and spell checking feature is very useful too.

  20. Wow…It`s look great. I saw this news before. But I don`t know this is a plugin. I want to try this plugin for next my blog. Thanks.

  21. Are you using Jetpack, Darren?

  22. This has crashed my site twice now!!! WTH?

  23. I already have plugins and they’re working perfectly fine. But I’m really curios about the features and capability of this Jetpack. I think it’s worth trying.

  24. Great plugin. Before this I saw this news. But when I read this post it`s look cool. Thanks Darren. I want to try this plugin to my next blog.

  25. WordPress.com stats have gone down for a lot of people in the past week and people are being directed to jetpack as it has the new and improved wordpress.com stat package. While it looks very nice it’s actually a major downgrade as the stats aren’t dependable at all. One minute it will say you have had 700 unique and then with a refresh it will then say 349.

  26. Seems like an excellent add-on, but I really wouldn’t have any use for it on my blogs. Does it give you the capability have having a tinted email opt-in page appear over your home page?

  27. Am gonna give jetpack a try. Good info mate!

  28. I just started using NewStatPress. It doesn’t have all the features of JetPack but then do you really need them? While mental floss like hover cards and node clouds like http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/nodes.html are sticky, the viewers for business want relationships with their blog sites that they can trust. With that in mind what aspects of Jetpack do you feel improve or increase integrity and content?

  29. I was already using three of the plug-ins included in Jetpack and thought it wouldn’t be worth installing until I realised two things. First, it’s two less plug-ins to worry about maintaining in future – that’s not much of an admin burden, but every little helps. Second, I have this idea that fewer plug-ins are better from a performance point of view. This may not be important – but again consolidating plug-ins feels like it makes good sense.

  30. Hi, I am currently attending Ultimate Internet Boot Camp at Singapore and learn how to become an Internet Marketer.

    Please give your comment on my website, it is useful to me. Thanks.

    – Darren Wong

  31. Im quite surprised you didnt notice this earlier as we wrote about it over 2 weeks ago: http://crenk.com/jetpack-power-up-your-wordpress-org-blog-with-wordpress-com-features/

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