WordPress.com now supports seamless integration between Google Photos and the WordPress media library. Users can connect their Google accounts to have access to their photos when inserting an image. Google Photos has gained popularity due to its automatic tagless organization and free, unlimited backup for photos and videos up to 16MP and 1080p HD. In…
Jetpack 5.3 was released with compatibility for PHP 7.1, a task the Jetpack team has been working on since January 2017 after they received multiple reports of failures with PHP 7.1 when opcache was enabled. This interfered with XML-RPC requests and some users reported issues managing their sites from WordPress.com and connecting to third-party apps.…
Jetpack’s Contact Form module hasn’t seen too many changes since its first release (version 1.3) in 2012. It is easily one of the most compelling features included in the plugin and has long been overdue for a refresh. Today’s 5.2 release brings major improvements to the Contact Form module. Previously, Jetpack launched the form builder…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Cody Landefeld, Senior web strategist and founder of Mode Effect. Landefeld describes some of the challenges that shop owners face and provides insight into a couple of WooCommerce projects Mode Effect has recently built. We discussed the future of WooCommerce and the odds of…
Automattic has been teasing its plan to add commercial themes to Jetpack for several months after introducing theme installation for self-hosted users from WordPress.com. In March, the plugin opened up access to all of WordPress.com’s free themes via the Jetpack Manage interface. All signs pointed to Automattic developing the infrastructure to offer commercial themes via…
WordPress.com is venturing into the realm of social media management applications with its latest feature that allows users to schedule Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn updates for individual posts. This goes beyond the basic Publicize functionality that automatically shares posts to connected accounts as soon as they are published, giving users the ability to automate their…
Late last year, Jetpack 4.3 unveiled a new admin interface written in React.js. The Jetpack team received feedback from more than 8K users before it was publicly released. While the old interface displayed all modules on one page, the new interface breaks up module management into sections. You can also access some modules by typing its name…
Jetpack 4.9 gives self-hosted WordPress users access to some of the widgets that are available on WordPress.com. One of the most useful ones for European websites is the new EU Cookie Law Banner widget. The WordPress plugin directory has dozens of plugins related to cookie consent, but Jetpack users can now get this feature bundled…
“Alexa, tell Blog Helper to create a new post called ‘Granny’s banana bread recipe.’” Imagine logging a new draft on your WordPress site using only your voice while working in the kitchen. That’s what Blog Helper, an Alexa skill, enables for WordPress.com and self-hosted Jetpack users. It is available for free in Amazon’s catalog of…
Jetpack 4.8 was released this week with a settings redesign that is a continuation of the React.js-powered admin interface introduced last September. The new settings screen has been completely rearranged under a more simplified menu. “We went through every setting on WordPress.com and Jetpack to make sure it was necessary to keep around, and to…
Automattic’s mobile engineers released a major update to WordPress for Android this week. Last year the app’s users saw a growing disparity between the features available to self-hosted sites and those available to WordPress.com users. Not having the WP REST API in core was holding the app back from providing the same site management features…
Today Jetpack announced that its users now have access to a collection of 165 free themes from WordPress.com. Jetpack users can browse, preview, and activate themes by visiting the WordPress.com Theme Showcase. WordPress.com has also added the ability for Jetpack users to upload a theme from its interface as well, a feature that targets those…
Jetpack is starting 2017 with a major release that is heavy on enhancements and improvements. Version 4.5 includes more than a dozen new shortcodes and widgets, along with revamped support for VideoPress. One of the most intriguing new features announced in this release, however, is the integration with WordAds, WordPress.com’s advertising program. Jetpack users are…
W3Techs published its Web Technologies of 2016 report today, compiling technologies that saw the largest increase in usage last year. The survey pulls data from the top 10 million sites (according to Alexa rankings) and compares the number of sites for each technology by measuring the difference from January 1, 2016 to January 1, 2017.…
WordPress.com announced today that users can now upload and publish VR content on their sites, including 360° photos and 360° videos. Regular photos and panoramas are also now viewable in VR. The VR gear tested so far includes Cardboard, Gear, Daydream, Rift, and Vive. Uploading VR content works just like adding normal pictures and videos.…