In this episode, Nathan Wrigley talks with Devin Walker, the new Artistic Director (Head) of Jetpack at Automattic. Devin shares his background in WordPress, the challenges and opportunities of leading Jetpack, and his plans to bring focus, simplify the experience, and improve both functionality and marketing. They discuss Jetpack’s strengths, weaknesses, upcoming AI features, organisational…
Jetpack 13.9.1, a critical security update, was released yesterday to fix a vulnerability in the Contact Form feature that had been present since 2016. This flaw allowed logged-in users of a site to access forms submitted by visitors. The vulnerability was discovered during an internal security audit, prompting the Jetpack team to collaborate with the…
Twitter suspended WordPress.com’s access to the Twitter API without notice yesterday. Representatives at WordPress.com do not know why their access is currently blocked but are working to regain it. The API enables features like Jetpack Social’s Twitter connection. Users who rely on this Jetpack module to auto-tweet their published posts will see errors in the…
Jetpack 11.9 was released this week with support for sharing posts to Mastodon. The new button allows readers to click an icon to launch a sharing window that will ask the user to enter the full URL of the Mastodon instance where they want to share the post. Adding the URL will update the window…
Automattic is bringing Tumblr’s Blaze ad tool to WordPress sites with its launch today on WordPress.com and Jetpack. Blaze made its debut in April 2022, to the delight of Tumblr users who will gladly shell out cash to get people to look at their cat or promote a game they made. It’s an affordable way…
Jetpack has introduced a major update to its Form block in the latest version 11.6 release. Users can now interact with the various form templates as patterns. A new quick start placeholder appears anytime users invoke a new form block. It displays a selection of the most commonly used form types as icons. Clicking on…
Jetpack has announced changes to its Jetpack Social plugin that may impact publishers who frequently share across social media networks. Previously, users could share an unlimited number of posts automatically via their connected social media accounts. Jetpack is shuffling its monetization strategy for this extension and has capped social sharing at 30 shares per month…
WP Super Cache, one of the oldest and most widely used static caching plugins for WordPress, is changing hands. After 15 years, the plugin’s author, Donncha Ó Caoimh, is handing over maintenance and development to Jetpack’s performance team. If you have been building WordPress sites since the early days, you are almost guaranteed to have…
Jetpack announced today that it is splitting out six of its most popular features into individual plugins. Automattic reports that the company received feedback from developers and site owners asking for the ability to use specific components of Jetpack as part of their own “tech stack” of plugins. The six features that are now available…
People have been asking if QR codes are dead for the past decade, but their relevancy has only increased as digital life becomes more vibrant. eMarketer forecasts that the number of US smartphone users scanning QR codes will increase from 83.4 million in 2022 to 99.5 million in 2025. QR codes are even more popular…
Jetpack is finally formalizing its approach to agency licensing with a new portal launched this week. The program is aimed at streamlining product setup and account billing records for agencies and professionals who use Jetpack on client projects. The dashboard shows partners their total licenses and costs at a glance. It also allows agencies to…
Jetpack is splitting out its commercial Backup feature into a standalone plugin that can be used without installing the core Jetpack plugin. The commercial product includes automated daily or real-time backups with one-click restores, even for sites that are offline. Backups include all WordPress database, theme, and plugin files, which are stored on WordPress.com’s infrastructure…
Today, Automattic released version 9.9 of its popular Jetpack plugin. The development team improved the modal animation and transition speed for the Instant Search module and added the Social Preview panel to the pre-publish sidebar. However, the most notable user-facing update was a refresh of its Carousel feature. The module creates a fullscreen overlay gallery…
Automattic has launched a new mobile app for Jetpack, available on iOS and Android. The app features an array of Jetpack-specific features, as well as those applicable to users on paid plans, along with core WordPress features. Inside it looks nearly identical to the official WordPress mobile apps, but it is noticeably missing WordPress.com specific…
The MapLibre project is picking up speed with the release of MapLibre GL Native, an open source mobile SDK for Android and iOS. As anticipated, MapTiler’s fork of Mapbox’s mobile map SDKs are coming under the MapLibre umbrella. This free library enables developers to write native applications that can display vector maps on mobile devices,…