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 https://jetpack.com 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.)
WordPress.com News 
Cool! One question: if I host my own domain, could wordpress.com searches still find me?
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They won’t find you as of today. But it is possible we will add a Jetpack feature at some point to change that.
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Too bad I don’t selfhost, but for those that do, AWESOME!
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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
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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.
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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
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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…
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This is wonderful, as I just changed to a self-hosted site! Thanks so much! 🙂
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It’s always nice to share.
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I am still thinking about self-hosting or not…
I am undecided, but this feature seems to be very good/simple and great working! 😉
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I was thinking about self-hosting too – this looks like a great addition
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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
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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 🙂
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thats ‘great news’. . .’nice one WordPress people!’. . .(cheers!)
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Coool! 🙂
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Would probably be great but I have a some troubles with sharedaddy and twitter.
With sharedaddy : I made numerous attempts to share a post by e-mail (with various emails) but I don’t receive any mail. I looked in the spam folder but they’re not there either. What should I do ? Also, I find it quite difficult to add services (in fact, I did not make it). Maybe a little more explanations would be useful.
With twitter : I was happy to be able to hide the answers. So I activated it. It seems to work once then it shows that twitter experiences a problem…
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You should go to http://jetpack.me/support as that’s the best place to get Jetpack support.
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if you deactivate pieces of the jetpack will the other individual plugins reactivate?
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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).
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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)
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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.
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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.
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Since you are hosted on WordPress.com, you don’t need Jetpack, you already have all of these features!
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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?
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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
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This will definitely change things for the better for some folks….Nice work!
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Maybe I will go self-hosted after all…who needs a website when WP does so much work for you?
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“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’ ❤ or did you confuse the two, too. 🙂
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Sounda great! Does this mean that my WordPress.com site & my WordPress.org site will now be able to combine stats?
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Would be very nice if WordPress like button come into pack.
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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!
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This is great news….
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I’m with Jennifer on this: why was this announced here? It doesn’t affect us!
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Many WordPress.com users have self-hosted blogs as well.
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thats cool!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Wow this is awesome. I might give self-hosting a try now. Hmmmm…
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Seems like a pretty useful tool.
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Dear Beau
Oh, I did not think that I could get video clips on my blog without paying for it? If I’m trailing behind in the uptake, let me know. I cannot see how to do that. Thanks so much. Great name by the way! When I tried to open Jetpack after saving it there was no (obvious) way to install it.
Thanks so much. Great name by the way!
India-leigh
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Jetpack does not host the video clips, it just makes it easier to embed them when they are hosted on another site (such as YouTube). If you install Jetpack then there are some links in the Learn More section under the “Shortcode Embeds” module.
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already love the Twitter feed functionality. Very nice.
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Waow just what i needed
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So a quick question. I noticed the Gravatar hovercard feature here on the site. I clicked on the “Turn Off Hovercards”. How do I re-enable the feature now on this page as I’m viewing it.
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Hi Kevin:
You can read about how to turn Hovercards on and off here:
https://wordpress.com/support/?s=hovercards
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Info on re-enabling hovercards at the bottom of this page: https://wordpress.com/support/gravatar-hovercards/
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I’m considering a self hosted WP blog so I can show swf files in my posts. If I goto self host and instal jetpack can I still display swf files in posts. Thanks
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Hi James: Yes. You can display .swf files in your posts on self-hosted blogs.
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This is great. Keep up the good work guys 🙂
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That sounds nice but… One thing…
Shouldn’t you change the name because of Mozilla’s Jetpack?
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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!
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cool, will try it 😀
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This is such a wonderful initiative!
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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
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Nice function and all, but it seem to slow the my site down a bit..
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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.
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Why is my previous comment/question still awaiting moderation?
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Hi Kevin: It doesn’t appear to be in moderation. Not sure where it went.
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Okay – spell it out for a Newb – what are the benefits of this? A for instance … I have my own blog and one for my new nonprofit organization. The site I host my domain through keeps crashing or otherwise having major issues, plus I am just not that much of a tech person. So …
What makes more sense – keeping my new non-profit organization’s blog on the .com version and figuring out how to pull my other site, adding the content under the pages option and then redirecting my URL? (that really sounds difficult to my technology challenged behind)
OR
Switching the whole thing over to a self-hosted site?
It sounds like the first option would work best for me, but is there a resource that points out the steps (for the HTML challenged) one would need to take to complete this? I love the ease of WordPress.com – and the reliability, but have held off on acting as I was unsure of the best choice.
Help for a newb?
Kat
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Hi Kat:
A basic rundown of the tradeoffs of self-hosting vs. WordPress.com can be found here:
https://wordpress.com/support/com-vs-org/
In general if you want something easier to maintain and less to know, WordPress.com is the way to go.
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My impression is that Jetpack helps you change the style and size of your font …. I have a wordpress.com site but I don’t know how to change the style or size of the font. Is there a feature to do that already on the .com sites?
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David: Jetpack has nothing to do with fonts. You can read about how to change Fonts on WordPress.com here:
https://wordpress.com/support/editors/font-size-color/
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It’s wonderful that everyone wants to lavish all this love and support onto WordPress personnel. And, it’s generally warranted.
However, I do believe there is confusion around Jetpack and it’s direct application to WordPress.com and/ or WordPress.org.
This might be a great time to explain to everyone what the vital differences are and how Jetpack does or does not affect Blogs on either platform.
With naught but good intentions, I’m asking WordPress to step-up and be very clear about all of this. Now is the time.
Brian Patrick Cork
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What are the advs and disadvs of self hosting?
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Chris:
You can read about it here – https://wordpress.com/support/com-vs-org/
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The mystery is finally unfolded. I’ve been asking myself why don’t my self hosted wordpress have a stats by default, instead I have to install a plugin.
Thanks a lot, I now can use this lovely features.
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thanks for sharing..i will try
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Wow!! Nice one – now I’m even more thinking about hosting the blog myself 🙂
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Check out Guided Transfer -we can help you make the move:
https://wordpress.com/blog/2011/03/11/guided-transfers/
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Thanks for the post great job
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I love this plugin, and I am excited about what it will be able to do.
ONE BIG ISSUE THOUGH
The site stats function work intermittently, and I get this error when it is not working.
“You have failed to authenticate with the WordPress.com API.”
Does anyone know whent this will be fixed?
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Scott: You should head over to http://jetpack.me/support where we can help you with this problem. Please report what host you are on.
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very cool stuff!
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I just want to thank you so much for this! I’ve always wanted some of the .COM features and now I can 🙂 🙂 🙂
Now to wait for some of the plugins to be integrated with Jetpack….
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i have several self hosted wp and installed with WordPress.com Stats plugin, several hours ago WordPress.com Stats plugin suddenly not working, is this bcoz Jetpack replace WordPress.com Stats plugin? bcoz i love this simple WordPress.com Stats plugin.
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The older version of WordPress.com stats should continue to work even with Jetpack now handling it for all new users. If you’re having trouble, please contact us via the support link here: http://jetpack.me/support/
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If I already have a one-click install of self-hosted WordPress (on one of the above-mentioned hosts), is this going to be in the next update, or should I go ahead and download the plugin myself?
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Most hosts will not be including this in previous one-click installs. Probably best to just go to your admin panel and search for “jetpack” in the plugin directory then install it from there.
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AWESOME!
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This is no longer applicable to me, fortunately… I used to be self-hosted using WordPress.org. But, I decided to move to WordPress.com because of the extra security and convenience. I no longer have to constantly backup my databases and update my WordPress and plugin software. I have everything I need here in WordPress.com, without the muss and fuss! Keep up the great work everybody! X
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This would be great if I had a self-hosted site…
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