Jetpack 3.3 is now available. The highlight of this release is the new centralized site dashboard feature that allows users to manage multiple Jetpack-connected WordPress sites and WordPress.com sites from one location in WordPress.com.
The new dashboard is mobile friendly and includes the centralized posting feature that was introduced in Jetpack 3.2. It also allows users to see all of their sites listed together and perform a number of housekeeping actions:
- Plugin management: Turn plugins on or off with one click — per site or in bulk.
- Initiate plugin updates: Update plugins for a single site or all sites in bulk.
- Automatic updates: Turn on auto-updates for any plugin on a per-site basis or in bulk.
Jetpack 3.3 is required in order to use the plugin management features, so you’ll need to update at least one of your sites to check it out. You also need to activate Jetpack’s JSON API feature and ensure that the “Allow remote actions” setting is enabled.
To view all the plugins you have installed, visit WordPress.com/Plugins. When you click through a plugin, you’ll find a short description of it and a list of the sites where you have it installed.
WordPress.com’s one dashboard to rule them all is now in direct competition with services like ManageWP, WP Remote, InfiniteWP, and several others that provide centralized site management.
As WordPress has become an increasingly popular solution for building websites, developers are often responsible for more sites than they can safely keep track of for updates. Centralized dashboard management is critical for scaling maintenance capabilities. It comes as no surprise that WordPress.com is getting its hook into self-hosted sites by moving to support centralized site management via Jetpack.
In addition to the new centralized dashboard, Jetpack 3.3 also brings many other enhancements to the plugin:
- Adds responsive video support to BuddyPress
- Custom Content Types: Added ‘order’ and ‘orderby’ options to portfolio shortcode
- Display notice when Jetpack Development Mode is on
- Compatibility with Twenty Fifteen
- Likes: Updated the code to accept arbitrary CPTs
- Related Posts: Allow filter by post_format
- Sharing: add new jetpack_sharing_counts filter for option to turn off sharing counts
- Sharing: Use the Site Logo Theme Tool and the Site Icon as fallbacks for image tags
The 3.3 release also adds several filters that allow developers to further customize Jetpack’s behavior. Check out the changelog for the full list of enhancements and improvements.
It made my life a whole lot easier! I can’t thank them enough!