Category: Blog

Before beginning this tutorial you will need to install and activate the free Jetpack plugin. Read this post for instructions on how to install Jetpack.

While there’s no end to the plugins available for self-hosted WordPress blogs which track and display various stats, using the Jetpack Stats feature via the Jetpack plugin is one of the easiest and most convenient methods.

Because the Stats module is automatically enabled when you first set up Jetpack, you shouldn’t need to take any additional steps to enable it. In this chapter, we’ll explain how to view your stats and what they mean, as well as how to configure and customize the module to better suit your requirements.

Viewing Your Website’s Stats

To view stats, you will need to add the Site Stats widget to your administrator control panel as explained in the following steps:

1. Go to the main page of your administrator dashboard by clicking on “Dashboard” close to the top-left corner.
2. Click on the “Screen Options” button to the right, and check the box beside “Site Stats”. With this option enabled, you will be able to review the number of visits to your website, the most popular pages and the search times which people are using to find your website.



3. If you want to find a more comprehensive overview of statistics pertaining to your WordPress site, navigate to Jetpack > Stats in your administrator dashboard. On this page, you will be able to review additional information about referrals, subscriptions and clicks.
4. Even more statistical information is available on wordpress.com, which you can view by navigating to wordpress.com/my-stats and logging into your account.

Using the WordPress.com Stats module, you can easily get a snapshot of your website’s performance without even having to leave the administrator dashboard. However, for a more comprehensive solution, you can also use a popular tool such as Google Analytics without any issues.

Before beginning this tutorial you will need to install and activate the free Jetpack plugin. Read this post for instructions on how to install Jetpack.

Jetpack includes a subscriptions module which allows your readers to easily subscribe to your blog in order to receive updates by email on the latest comments and posts. This powerful feature helps to encourage more of your visitors to become regular readers, and it is one of the most effective solutions for setting up email subscriptions for a typical blog. Instead of using your own hosting package to handle the potentially large volume of emails you’ll be sending out, Jetpack uses the servers at WordPress.com, and best of all, it doesn’t cost anything either. The Subscriptions service should be activated by default once you have set up Jetpack, but you can turn it on and off from the Jetpack > Settings page as with any other module belonging to the plugin.

By default, email subscriptions will already be already be turned on, and your visitors will see checkboxes when they leave a comment on one of your posts or pages. When a reader leaves a comment, they will be able to choose up to two options including email notifications when someone posts a follow-up comment or when you publish a new post. Additionally, you can place the Blog Subscriptions widget in any desired widget area or add the option to subscribe anywhere else on your website by using a small piece of code.

Using the Jetpack Subscriptions Widget

By far the quickest and easiest way to set up email subscriptions is to use the widget, which will be available as long as the Subscriptions module is activated (which it should be by default).

1. In your administrator dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Widgets and look for the “Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack)” widget in the left-side column.
2. Drag the widget to the preferred widget area, such as the Primary Widget Area which is the main sidebar on your site. It will be activated immediately.
3. Configure the activated widget by clicking on its name in the right-side column to display the available settings.
4. Enter your own widget title, optional text to display to your readers and the text for the subscribe button if you don’t want to use the default options.
5. Check the box beside “Show total number of subscribers” if you want your readers to see how many people are currently subscribing to your blog.
6. Click on “Save” to save your changes, and they will appear on your site immediately.

Using the Jetpack Subscriptions Shortcode

By pasting the shortcode for the Jetpack Subscriptions module in the HTML for your website, you can place a subscription form anywhere on your website, without having to be restricted by the widget areas which are available with your currently active theme. The required code is as follows:

[jetpack_subscription_form]

By adding some additional modifiers, you can also customize the subscription form to the same extent that you can customize the widget. The available modifiers are as follows, and they need to be added within the shortcode brackets as illustrated below:

• To change the title, use the following syntax:
  [jetpack_subscription_form title="Your title"]
• To change the subscription text, use the following:
  [jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_text="Your subscribe text"]
• To change the text on the subscribe button, use the following modifier:
  [jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_button="Sign Up"]
• To display the number of current subscribers, use the following code:
  [jetpack_subscription_form show_subscribers_total="1"]

Simply replace the bolded text with that of your choice. You can use multiple modifiers (including all four if you wish) simply by placing each one within the brackets, leaving a space between each one.

Now that you have set up email subscriptions for your blog, anyone can subscribe simply by entering his or her email address. Once they subscribe, the reader will receive a confirmation email whereby he or she will need to click “Confirm Follow” to start receiving updates from you. Finally, you can also customize the content of the emails to a degree by navigating to Settings > Reading in your administrator dashboard and changing the feed settings to “Summary” so that only post summaries are shown in the emails.

Before beginning this tutorial you will need to install and activate the free Jetpack plugin. Read this post for instructions on how to install Jetpack.

Promoting your blog and new posts when you publish them is a major part of the battle when it comes to building up a successful website. To help streamline the process, Jetpack includes an extremely useful feature called ‘Publicize’ which will automatically share new posts on specified social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, whenever they are published. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at how to set up this invaluable feature to help spread the word about your new content.

Jetpack supports the following social networks for automated posting: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. You can also define your own additional custom services if you want to promote your posts on social networks which are otherwise unsupported.

Activating the Publicize Feature

If the Publicize feature is disabled, you will need to activate it before you can link your social media profiles in order to have Jetpack post and promote your blog posts on your behalf.

1. In your administrator dashboard, click “Jetpack” in the top-left corner, scroll down the page and click “View all Jetpack Features”.
2. Scroll down the list of features until you find “Publicize”. Click on the link and click “Activate” on the window which appears.
3. In the same manner, also activate the “Sharing” feature, since it will allow you to add social media sharing buttons automatically to your posts.

Connecting to Your Social Networks

In order to have Jetpack publish posts on your social media profiles on your behalf, you will need to give the plugin your permission to access them:

1. Navigate to Settings > Sharing in your administrator dashboard to connect the social media accounts you use with Jetpack.
2. Click on “Connect” beside the name of the social network you want to add, and enter your username and password.
3. Once your connections to the services you wish to use have been approved, a list of them will appear in the “Publish” box whenever you write a new post.

Whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on your connected social media accounts, including an image such as a featured image, an image attached to the post or any other image that Jetpack can find in your post (in this order of priority). Note that only posts will be publicized; static pages, draft posts and duplicate posts will not be publicized.

Adding Sharing Buttons

In the Sharing page in your administrator dashboard, you’ll also be able to add sharing buttons automatically to every post that you publish, allowing your readers to quickly and easily share your posts on their own social media profiles.

1. Drag the buttons you want to add to your posts from the “Available Services” section to the “Enabled Services” section beneath it.
2. Modify any additional options, such as “Sharing label” and “Button style” as required. Any changes will be displayed in the “Live Preview” window above.
3. Click on “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page, and the sharing buttons will go live on every post on your blog.

With sharing and post publication set up, a great deal of your social media promotion will already be taken care of, and Jetpack and your readers will be able to start spreading the word about your hard work!

Before beginning this tutorial you will need to install and activate the free Jetpack plugin. Read this post for instructions on how to install Jetpack.

Jetpack includes a simple widget which you can use to easily add images to any of the widget areas available in your currently selected theme. You can activate additional widgets and other features using the Jetpack settings page, available by clicking on the applicable option in the sidebar in the administrator dashboard. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at the process of activating the image widget and placing an image in the sidebar of your WordPress site.

How to Activate the Image Widget

Activating and managing the various features of Jetpack may be done from the Jetpack settings page, which provides a user-friendly interface along with a list of features and explanations as to what they do.

1. In your administrator dashboard, click on “Jetpack” close to the top-left corner of the page.
2. Scroll down the page and click on “View all Jetpack features” to see a list of all of the available plugins and widgets.



3. Scroll down to find the “Extra Sidebar Widgets” tile. You should find it in the left-side column. Click on the tile and click “Activate”.

How to Add an Image to the Sidebar

You can add any image you like to the sidebar using the Jetpack Image widget, provided that it is in the JPG or PNG format. The image doesn’t even need to be hosted on your website either – you can specify any image located on any website, since all you need is the URL.

1. In your administrator dashboard, mouse over the “Appearance” button and click “Widgets” in the pop-up menu.
2. Drag and drop the “Image (Jetpack)” widget from the left-side column to the preferred widget area on your right, such as “Primary Widget Area”.
3. Click on the activated widget in the right-side column to display the available configuration options.
4. Enter a title for the widget, or leave it blank if you only want to display an image without any accompanying text.
5. Enter the full URL of the image in the box beside “Image URL”. Ensure that the URL links directly to an image, including its file extension, such as JPG. You will first need to upload the image to your WordPress media library (Media -> Add New) and then get the URL from there.
6. Fill in the alternate text with a few words describing the image. This text will appear when someone moves the cursor over the image.
7. Enter a title and a caption for the image if you wish. Finally, choose an alignment, and specify a width and height for the image in pixels if you wish.
8. If you want to turn the image into a link, enter the full URL of the link you wish to use in the “Link URL” box.
9. Click “Save” to save your changes. The image should appear immediately on your WordPress blog.

That’s all there is to it! You can add as many images to your sidebar or other available widget areas as you wish, simply by dragging another instance of the widget into the desired sidebar area.

A self-hosted blog with WordPress.org gives you the versatility to do just about anything you want in terms of design and function through a variety of plugins. However, taking advantage of plugins and other features typically requires the installation and maintenance of numerous individual plugins. The purpose of the popular Jetpack plugin for WordPress is to consolidate all of these features into a single, user-friendly plugin which can be installed and maintained as easily as any other individual plugin.

The Jetpack plugin provides a quick and convenient way to supercharge your self-hosted WordPress blog by adding an extensive range of invaluable features. Some of the most important features of the plug-in include a sidebar image widget, automatic social media posting, email subscriptions, recent Tweets, statistics and analytics, social media commenting and much more.

Installing Jetpack is much like installing any other plugin. You’ll need to have a self-hosted WordPress website running version 3.8 or later, and you will need a free account at WordPress.com (which is different from your blog account), since the plugin uses the resources from the WordPress.com cloud.

To start with, we will look at the process of installing Jetpack, with future installments showing you how to setup the aforementioned features.

How to Install Jetpack

As is the case with any plug-in for WordPress, you can install Jetpack either from within the WordPress plugin directory, accessible through your administrator dashboard, or manually by uploading the extracted files to your FTP server. However, the former method is by far the easiest, as explained below:

1. Log into your WordPress administrator dashboard, and click “Plugins” from the menu to the left.
2. Click “Add New,” and type in “Jetpack” into the search box. The first result should be “Jetpack by WordPress.com”.
3. Click on “Install Now” beneath the plugin title and click “OK” to confirm. Wait a few moments for the plugin to download, unpack and install.
4. Click the “Activate Plugin” link. The plug-in will be activated, and you’ll be returned to the Plugins page.

Jetpack requires that you connect it to a WordPress.com account in order to take advantage of its integrated cloud features. A WordPress.com account is separate and different from the account you created for your blog. If you don’t have a WordPress.com account, you can create one here. Once that is done you are ready to begin the connection process for JetPack:

1. Back in the Plugins page, click on “Connect to WordPress.com” in the green bar near the top of the page.
2. Enter your WordPress.com username and password in the next page, and click “Authorize Jetpack”. Jetpack should now be ready to use.

Congratulations! Jetpack is now ready to configure and use. However, you should also make sure to keep Jetpack updated, since new versions are released on a regular basis. When updates for plugins are available, the number of available updates will be displayed on the “Plugins” button in the administrator dashboard. To update Jetpack in the future, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Plugins page in the administrator dashboard and scroll down to find the “Jetpack by WordPress.com” plugin.
2. If any update is available, an alert will appear beneath the plugin. Click the “update now” link to download and install the latest version automatically.

One of the most common questions I get is how to create a static homepage in WordPress.

A static blog page is a good idea if you want your readers to see the same, consistent message every time they visit your blog. Keep in mind though, one of the hallmarks of a good blog is fresh, new content, so you will still want to make your latest blog posts easily accessible even if you are using a static homepage.

Here’s how to do it:

1. First you need to create the page that you want to use for your homepage. To do that, login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to “Pages –> Add New”

2. Let’s create a page called “Homepage” (you can name this page anything you want). When you are finished creating your page, click “Publish”

3. Navigate to “Settings –> Reading”

4. At the top of the Reading Settings page you will see “Front page displays”. Click the “A static page” selection. In the “Front page:” drop-down box select the page that you created in step #1.

5. Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page. You now have a static homepage!

Creating a New Page for Your Latest Posts

1. As mentioned above, you will still want people to be able to access your latest posts easily. The best way to do this it to create another page to display your latest posts. To start, navigate to “Pages –> Add New”

2. Create a page called “New Posts”. When you are finished creating your page, click “Publish”

3. Navigate to “Settings –> Reading”

4. At the top of the Reading Settings page you will see “Front page displays”. Click the “A static page” selection. In the “Posts page:” drop-down box select the page that you created in step #1.

5. Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page. Your posts will now display on the page that you selected.