Boost your self-hosted WordPress with Jetpack
WordPress.com has grown into one of the most amazing cloud architectures in the world. This has enabled blogs hosted here to have features unavailable on self-hosted WordPress installs. This makes us sad, since here at WordPress.com we want every WordPress install everywhere to be amazing.
In this spirit, we have great news. We are now making the power of WordPress.com available to almost all WordPress blogs, regardless of where they are hosted.
With Jetpack, a new plugin from Automattic, people not on WordPress.com can now access features that depend on WordPress.com. Jetpack also provides convenience features that don’t use the cloud, but are now easier to install, or were unavailable as plugins before.
To start, go to http://jetpack.me and read the backstory from Matt on why Jetpack is so important for WordPress.
(Mozilla Jetpack is a wonderful, but entirely unrelated, open source project run by Mozilla Labs. We checked with them first and we’re mutually cool on the use of the name.)
March 9th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Cool! One question: if I host my own domain, could wordpress.com searches still find me?
March 9th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
They won’t find you as of today. But it is possible we will add a Jetpack feature at some point to change that.
March 9th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Too bad I don’t selfhost, but for those that do, AWESOME!
March 9th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
I for some reason unknown to me have a wordpress.org site at http://www.thebettingheadhunter.com – should I be moving lock stock and barrel to a wordpress.com locations?? Please advise
Thanks
Gavin
March 9th, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Good to know.
I’m considering moving a business site of mine to a self-hosted wordpress format, modified a little to suit its needs. What puts me off is inertia (currently someone else manages the technical side of that business), and also uncertainty as to whether the knowledge I’ve acquired while personal blogging here on wordpress.com would be transerable to a self-hosted wordpress.org platform. This is a reassuring development on that score.
March 9th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
I think I am speechless. Technology is amazing. The possibilities are endless and for someone like me; more than I can can think about.
You really have to be out there and forward thinking this stuff. The developers that come up with the all this is astounding.. Thx
March 9th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
This is great! I had been putting off the move to self-hosting (though I’ve been paying for the domain name for ages now… yuck) because of the loss of functionality I was expecting to experience. However, this puts me at ease and reassures me for the future. Now to actually come up with the gumption to get my act together and make the move…
March 9th, 2011 at 7:09 pm
This is wonderful, as I just changed to a self-hosted site! Thanks so much!
March 9th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
It’s always nice to share.
March 9th, 2011 at 7:14 pm
I am still thinking about self-hosting or not…
I am undecided, but this feature seems to be very good/simple and great working!
March 9th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
I was thinking about self-hosting too – this looks like a great addition
March 9th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Scott:
Are you saying that if we have a wordpress.org blog people searching tags on wordpress.com can’t find our posts?
Why are we being carved out of the community?
Brian Patrick Cork
March 9th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
WordPress.org sites are self-hosted and separate from WordPress.com. Only WordPress.com sites (which we host, and all run on our infrastructure, with shared code between them, unlike WordPress.org sites) are included in tag pages/searches on WordPress.com. You’re not being carved out of any community by using WordPress.org, but WordPress.com is its own specific community. We’re hoping to bridge that gap with Jetpack though
March 9th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
thats ‘great news’. . .’nice one WordPress people!’. . .(cheers!)
March 9th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Thanks Beau. How does Jetpack bridge that gap?
And… This raises an interesting question… How are the people reading my wordpress.org blog finding me? You may not know this answer, but maybe you can speculate?
Brian
March 9th, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Currently WordPress.com users get a lot of features as part of their experience that WordPress.org users don’t get (and often don’t want!). Jetpack is our way of making more of the .com features available to .org users, so that they can pick and choose what works for them.
March 9th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
I have a big concern. There is no way to individual activate and deactivate the various plugins that make up Jetpack.
So, for instance, if I install Jetpack and want to use a third party YouTube embedding program that uses the Youtube shortcode, I’ll find it clashes with Jetpack, which has the same.
What if I want all the functionality but with, say, the shortcodes switched off?
This is more concerning as your FAQ says that the individual versions of the plugins will be discontinued and users pushed towards Jetpack.
March 9th, 2011 at 10:51 pm
You can deactivate specific Jetpack “modules” by clicking the “Learn More” button for that module then the “Deactivate” button that magically appears. Hard to find, we know.
March 9th, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Coool!
March 9th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
if you deactivate pieces of the jetpack will the other individual plugins reactivate?
March 10th, 2011 at 2:42 am
If Jetpack auto-deactivates a previous stand-alone plugin, you’ll need to manually re-activate it if you decide to turn off the Jetpack version. Note however that any stand-alone plugins which we’re rolling into Jetpack (Sharedaddy, Stats and After the Deadline) will no longer receive updates outside of Jetpack (you will need to switch to the Jetpack version to get any new updates).
March 10th, 2011 at 1:29 am
This is good I suppose, before I say more I should probably search a little more on the offerings of this. However, I assumed self hosted or otherwise hosted wordpress blogs (like from wordpress.org) would allow the administrator more freedoms. There are a lot of features that .org has over .com. I’m possibly stating something completely irrelevant to this news, so I beg your pardon if that is the case. But eventually I plan on moving my .com to .org obviously requiring another host. Would Jetpack be advantageous to have when I do so? (Rhetorical of course- I plan on doing my research now. I am still a newb)
March 10th, 2011 at 2:38 am
WordPress.org does provide more freedom than WordPress.com, but with that freedom comes the responsibility of maintaining your own website, keeping up to date etc. Jetpack provides WordPress.org users with some of the additional features that were previously only available to WordPress.com users.
March 10th, 2011 at 2:36 am
I want this so much but I do not have a plug in button to intstall it. Is there another way? My blog is http://www.indialeigh.wordpress.com Thank you.
March 10th, 2011 at 2:39 am
Since you are hosted on WordPress.com, you don’t need Jetpack, you already have all of these features!
March 10th, 2011 at 5:59 am
So, does it mean that new features will be popping out immediately at a self-hosted wordpress blog? Does it mean jetpack plugins will download and install new plugins immediately from wordpress’ plugins gallery?
March 10th, 2011 at 8:03 am
That jetpack picture is so cute… we need t-shirts!
Excellent bonus for those on the self-hosted sites… inching closer for me!
Kudos,
Eliz
March 10th, 2011 at 8:15 am
This will definitely change things for the better for some folks….Nice work!
March 10th, 2011 at 8:47 am
Maybe I will go self-hosted after all…who needs a website when WP does so much work for you?
March 10th, 2011 at 8:49 am
“With Jetpack, a new plugin from Automattic, people not on WordPress.com can now access features that depend on WordPress.com.”
While I’m very happy for our WordPress.org friends that these features are now available to them too, I’m confused why this was announced on the WordPress.com blog. The ORG blog looks like it could use some lovin’ <3 or did you confuse the two, too.
March 10th, 2011 at 10:29 am
Sounda great! Does this mean that my WordPress.com site & my WordPress.org site will now be able to combine stats?
March 10th, 2011 at 11:45 am
Would be very nice if WordPress like button come into pack.
March 10th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
My main blog is self-hosted but I also have blog on WordPress.com. I love both!
This is great news! Checking the link…
Dank je wel!
March 10th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
I am thrilled with this. But, careful! Jetpack Stats crashed my site and I still cannot log in. Hoping for some good 24/7 support from WordPress.com Anyone else have a problem with anything?
March 10th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
We received your support ticket and I see that you did receive our reply as you’re back up and running.
We’ll dig into your particular setup a bit more in support to see what we can find.
March 10th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
This looks awesome.
As others have mentioned one of the key reasons I use WordPress.com vs a self-hosted installation is the discoverability and built-in community. I know it’s asking a lot, but if those could be incorporated into a future release of Jetpack I might actually faint from sheer bliss.
March 10th, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Sounds fantastic. And a few juicy features already available. Can we look forward to the dot com email subscription feature as part of the jetpack offering? I’m loving this feature on dot com – easy subscription plus smooth looking mails to subscribers every time a new blog posts goes online – and have so far failed to locate a plugin that does exactly the same for the selfhosted blog I’m currently developing.
March 10th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Wow this is awesome. I might give self-hosting a try now. Hmmmm…
March 10th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Seems like a pretty useful tool.
March 10th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
This is great. Keep up the good work guys
March 11th, 2011 at 4:02 am
That sounds nice but… One thing…
Shouldn’t you change the name because of Mozilla’s Jetpack?
March 11th, 2011 at 4:22 am
great! love jetpack i always wanted shortcodes for wordpress sel hosted blogs as a plugin now we get is all in one i wanted someone to code that into plugin but luckily for me after about a year this comes straight from the awesome automattic wordpress stats and wp.me shortlinks were available separately in the plugin WordPress.com Stats i always used wordpress stats for wp.me links on every instance i have of self hosted wordpress
thanks developers! thanks for the awesome plugin
i especially like the foot note you guys being cool with using jetpack as a name i love mozilla’s awesome open source project too
it’s a win win for me
thanks again!
March 11th, 2011 at 7:12 am
cool, will try it
March 11th, 2011 at 11:37 am
This is such a wonderful initiative!
March 11th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Aww why could this not have been available two weeks ago before I moved back to WordPress.com from a self hosted blog.. Still excellent work you guys
March 11th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Fantastic news! Just great. Stats, Video short codes and spell checking are great add-ons.
I know a couple of sites i need to add this functionality to right now.