Jetpack 3.9.5 was released yesterday with compatibilities for the upcoming WordPress 4.5 release and a handful of enhancements/bug fixes. Shortly after issuing the routine maintenance update, the Jetpack team began receiving reports of random, unwanted videos being added to the comments of posts. Any number string in the comments was automatically converted into a Vimeo…
Jetpack 3.9.3 and 3.9.4 are now available. Although 3.9.3 is billed as a “maintenance and compatibility release,” there are a number of significant changes and improvements that make this an important release. WordPress 4.5 will introduce native support for a theme logo. This will render Jetpack’s site logo feature obsolete. The 3.9.3 release of the…
On this day in 2011, Jetpack, the project formerly known as “.org connect” inside Automattic, was released to the public. At the time, the team consisted of five people. Today, there are more than 50 people on various teams within the project, including, support, user experience, growth, and development. It’s also active on more than…
Jetpack 3.9 has just been released with a new module that makes it easy for users to add sitemaps to their websites. Since sitemaps are important for SEO, many WordPress sites already have a plugin installed to create them. The new module in Jetpack will detect if you’re already using one of the popular sitemap…
Late in 2015, Arūnas Liuiza, a WordPress plugin developer, announced a new project called Measure Jetpack. Measure Jetpack is an independent, comprehensive series of benchmarks that will show how much impact Jetpack has on a site’s performance. Over the last few months, little information has been shared on the project’s status. I reached out to Liuiza…
On December 17, telecommunications companies cut off access to WhatsApp in Brazil after the company did not comply with police wiretapping requests. Many of the app’s estimated 100 million users went in search of an alternative, landing on Telegram, WhatsApp’s rival messaging app. Telegram gained 5.7 million new users in one day as a result…
Last week Jetpack announced that its Photon image service added support for the WebP image format, which provides up to 34% size reduction for served images when compared JPEG images of the same visual quality. For Photon users this translates into faster-loading pages. WebP is not yet natively supported by all browsers, so Photon will…
According to Matthias Gelbmann of W3Techs, 25% of the sites it surveys are using WordPress. The milestone comes two years after reaching the 20% mark. The following image shows WordPress’ rapid growth from 13.1% in January 2011 to 25% today. Drupal and Joomla, two other popular open source content management systems combine for 4.9%, slightly…
Jetpack 3.8 is available for download and includes, Google+ badges, Twitch.TV embed shortcode, improvements to the contact form module, and bug fixes. Users can now display a Google+ Badge widget that shows your Google+ profile, page, or community. You can configure the badge’s width, layout, and choose between a light or dark color scheme. A…
If you’ve noticed an influx of brute force attacks on your site, you’re not the only one. Sucuri is reporting that brute force amplification attacks are targeting WordPress sites with XML-RPC enabled. In a nutshell, XML-RPC contains a system.multicall method which allows developers to execute multiple methods and commands inside a single request. What is…
Just about every time we publish an article about Jetpack, one or more readers leaves a comment similar to the following, I don’t use Jetpack because it slows down my site. Many of the comments don’t link to or provide data that backs up their claim. Outside of the benchmarks produced by the BruteProtect team…
At the end of 2014, Jetpack 3.3 introduced a centralized dashboard that enables users to manage Jetpack powered sites. At the time, you could only do the following: 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…
Jetpack 3.7.2 is available for download and patches two security vulnerabilities. The first is a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the contact form due to improper input sanitation that affects Jetpack 3.7.0 and below. Marc-Alexandre Montpas of Sucuri is credited with responsibly disclosing the vulnerability. The second is an information disclosure vulnerability present in certain hosting…
Jetpack 3.7 is available and includes a simpler user interface, support for development sites, and fixes several issues with a variety of modules. The new interface separates some of Jetpack’s functionality into categories such as, performance and security, traffic growth, and WordPress.com tools. The most commonly used modules are listed first with a link underneath…
Jetpack 3.6 is available and has several bug fixes and enhancements. Jetpack CLI which is a command line interface for Jetpack and extends off of wp-cli for WordPress, has undergone a number of improvements. There are a handful of new extra sidebar widgets, including Facebook Like Box, and Social Media Icons. Existing widgets such as Top Posts are…