Jetpack is a one-window plugin offering multiple benefits for your WordPress website.
Created by Automattic (WooCommerce founders), Jetpack provides various features for WordPress security, performance, marketing, and more. Despite being characterized as an unnecessary plugin, Jetpack powers more than 5 million WordPress sites currently.
In this blog, we will dive into Jetpack’s solutions and see how you can use them to your advantage.
How To Install Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can look for Jetpack on WordPress and install it from there, as shown here:
Once activated, you’ll be asked to log in with WordPress or Gmail. After logging in, you can choose from plans ranging from $4.95 to $24.95 or simply continue with the free version.
Configuring Jetpack Plugin Settings
Jetpack has the following options given in the sidebar:
- Activity Log
- Dashboard
- Settings
- Subscribers
- Search
- Stats
- Security – includes backup, firewall, brute force protection, etc.
For settings, the following tabs are available:
- Security – includes backup, firewall, brute force protection, etc.
- Performance – includes site and image load speed.
- Writing – help with composing content, adding custom content types, enabling widgets for subscription forms, etc.
- Sharing – automating social media sharing, enabling likes on pages and posts, etc.
- Discussion – enabling comments, likes on comments, etc.
- Traffic – Tools include SEO, Google Analytics, Related posts, etc.
- Newsletter – integrating newsletter subscription option on pages.
- Monetize – integrate ads and payment options.
In this blog, we will focus on the main features, including security, performance, and traffic.
Jetpack WordPress Plugin Security Settings
With Jetpack, you can add backups, security, downtime monitoring, and more to your WordPress site. Let’s go through Jetpack’s security features!
Downtime Monitoring
Downtime monitoring is essential – especially if you have critical data on your site.
This will help identify any critical issues which can lead to loss of data. Jetpack’s downtime monitoring feature supports sending notifications to your WordPress.com email address, notifying you about downtime.
Firewall
You can also use Jetpack’s firewall which can be implemented at the application level.
Brute Force Attack Protection
Given the popularity of WordPress, sites created on the CMS are hot targets for hackers.
WordPress endpoints like /wp-login.php are most attacked by bots to access your site’s backend.
Now, it’s recommended to implement brute force protection at the web server level. However, there’s no harm in adding another layer of protection at the CMS level as well.
WordPress.com Login
This feature simply allows you to use your WordPress.com credentials as your site credentials.
There’s nothing too special about this, just an add-on option to enhance user experience.
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Jetpack WordPress Plugin Performance Settings
Nowadays, your website needs to load as quickly as possible.
It is important for visitors, which is an important consideration for SEO.
Thankfully Jetpack has a few features in its arsenal to optimize your site for speed such as CDN, video hosting, search optimization, etc.
Let’s check each one out.
Search (Paid)
The first Performance feature is search optimization.
It works by processing data records quicker to provide search results to site users.
How does this help you? Typically, the size of your database and WordPress settings can slow down the search capability of your site. Jetpack Search resolves this using Elasticsearch, which processes data faster than querying the database.
However, there is a hefty cost attached. You can use the free version which processes 5,000 records per month. But, if your site has more data, then you will require the paid version which processes 10K records for $8.25/mo.
Performance and Speed
Jetpack allows you to improve site performance by optimizing images and static files like CSS and Javascript.
Jetpack compresses the size of images by converting them to the .Webp format for supporting browsers.
For static files, this feature caches some elements in the Jetpack CDN. However, this does not cover files from other plugins or themes.
Hence, be mindful of what is being done. You can choose either option shown in the image above, or go with both for the best page loading times.
Media
Looking to add videos to your site without the need for external video hosts?
Jetpack VideoPress allows you to add videos directly to your website without any ads or branding.
Additionally, you can restrict video viewership to site members only.
You can upload 1 video on the free version, while the premium version allows up to 1 TB of video uploads for $4.95/mo.
Jetpack WordPress Plugin Traffic Settings
There’s a lot you can do to bring more visitors to your site.
SEO, ads, promotion. The initiatives are many, time-consuming, and costly.
Thankfully, Jetpack provides a good mix of tools that help you increase traffic with a few clicks.
Related Posts
Adding a related posts block below your blog articles can help retain visitors.
Jetpack removes the hassle of using a separate plugin for this. You can use Jetpack to add the section, use thumbnails for articles, and preview the section.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The Jetpack SEO setting allows you to take control of on-page SEO practices. Edit metadata and preview how it will appear in search results, directly in the WordPress editor.
Given SEO is an important consideration, it is suggested to check out alternatives available in the market like Yoast SEO and RankMath.
Google Analytics (Paid)
This can come in handy if you are setting up a new website.
Jetpack allows you to connect Google Analytics to your WordPress site. In a few clicks, you can add the Analytics tag to your website, avoiding manual labor.
However, this is a premium feature available in the Security plan for $29.95/mo.
Blaze Ads
Attract audiences from Tumblr and the millions of free WordPess.com sites with Blaze.
Promote any page on your site, starting from $5 per day. You can customize the ad creative, set audience criteria, and specify a budget of up to $50 per day.
WP.me Shortlinks
Nobody likes clicking on long, complicated, spammy-looking links.
Get more link clicks by using the WP.me Shortlinks feature. This will convert your webpage links to the https://wp.me format.
Simply enable the option and click on the Jetpack logo, the lightning image on the top-right corner of your page editor to generate a short link.
Site Verification
This Jetpack feature allows you to verify site ownership with search engines like Google, Yandex, Bing, Pinterest, and Facebook.
However, there’s no need to do this if you’ve already done so previously.
It’s important to note that it’s not required to verify your site with these search engines to be indexed by them.
Jetpack WordPress Plugin – Is It Worth It?
Now that we’ve seen what Jetpack has to offer, it is time to answer the question – is it for you?
Packed with handy solutions for a decent monthly cost, Jetpack offers enough value for someone who’s starting a new website. The all-in-one solution really helps you optimize all aspects of your site, without the need for various plugins.
However, the features aren’t the best when judged separately. There are better alternatives available for site performance or SEO, for example, which better suit you if you’re a pro at running your WordPress site.
What do you think about Jetpack? Have any favorite WordPress plugins? Drop them in the comments below!
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