Forcefully Installed WP Plugin Jetpack Review

I’ve installed a plugin called Jetpack to fix some recent problems I was having with my WordPress.com stats package.  I was seeing this issue.

Your WordPress.com account is not authorized to view the stats of this blog

The solution to this problem was to upgradewordpress.com stats (I will not camel back your name today I’m in a mood) to a new plugin called jetpack which lumps a number of WordPress.com plugins into one package that can be installed on self hosted blogs.

For the record I’m not that happy being forced to change a plugin for a much more bloaty plugin I think both streams should be kept active, but hey ho why listen to me or even ask your users what they want.

 

Onwards What Is Jetpack

It’s a packaging of a number of very popular plugins used on the WordPress.com hosted platofrm that are now available to self hosted WordPress users, this one plugins gives you

• WordPress.com stats


• wp.me url shortner


• Hovercards for gravitar


• Embed shortcodes for media such as Youtube


• Twitter widget


• Sharedaddy – social media shareing doo-hickey


• After the deadline – an excellent spell checker

Download JetPack

You can download jetpack from this URL http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jetpack/

I’m using two of the functions

To get my stats back I have been forced to upgrade to a suit of functions I don’t need or want.  I am only really interested in stats and after the deadline.

Buggy

I’ve seen a number of connection problems with my stats, where I could not retrieve the results I wanted to view, not a good start.  WordPress.com stats worked fine.

Future

Here comes the money shot, expect jetpack to be extended to some of the premium options available to wordpress.com sites such as vaultpress , akismet and videopress,. once you have the plugin installed it is easier to introduce these premium services and make some dosh off the self hosted community.

Wrap Up

I’m a little grouchy about Jetpack, lets see where it goes in the future.  What are your feelings about this enforced upgrade.

I know I’m getting excellent free services from these plugins but I’m aloud a rant every now and again.