Jetpack 7.2.1: Maintenance Release

Recently we added a “hint” utility to Jetpack to help you discover all of its features. For quite some time now, we have been hearing from you, agencies, and hosts, that Jetpack has a vast amount of features that aren’t widely known. People can get stuck in a confusing loop trying to find Jetpack features by searching through the wp-admin.

Similar to buying a new phone or getting a new car, you don’t always learn about every single new feature on day one; instead you discover new things as you go. These hints are meant to help out in just that way.

However, we made a mistake, and we’re moving to correct it immediately. Our intention with these feature hints is to help you discover helpful features of Jetpack that you already have, right when you need them most. Today we’re correcting an error in judgement that resulted in the hints suggesting Jetpack features that actually required an upgrade. We’ve also made some design changes that make these feature hints less prominent. This way, you can choose to enable a feature of Jetpack that you already have installed, or you can quickly choose another great solution from the WordPress directory.

Go ahead and update Jetpack to 7.2.1; it’s now available for download.

• We’ve removed all Jetpack hints that required an upgrade to work, so rest assured all recommendations are only for features you already have installed and ready to go.
• We’re reducing confusion around feature hints by simplifying the design and changing some text; this way it’s clear that feature hints are from Jetpack and are easily dismissible.
• A slideshow block bug has been fixed as well — now everyone will be able to easily move between pictures.

Going forward we want to help create a feature hints solution that works for all WordPress users and plugin developers. We are excited to work with suggestions like this one, by Joost de Valk and see how we might be able to find a solution in WordPress core to help users discover plugin features, and prevent this very common issue. Once a core solution is available, we plan to adopt it for Jetpack.

The full changelog has more details on this update, and our feature hints support page has useful information about this feature. If you have any more questions, we’re able to answer them all via our support channels. Thanks for using Jetpack!

Jesse Friedman

Jesse Friedman has been building websites for 20 years, and exclusively with WordPress since 2006. Jesse has written several books, taught 100’s of students as a professor, and organized dozens of local meetups along with a few WordCamps. Jesse has spoken at tech conferences around the world including SXSW, HOW, Future events and many more; and has consulted for a wide array of companies from small agencies to multi-billion dollar international companies. Today Jesse is the Head of WP Cloud and VP of Innovation and Partnership Success for Jetpack at Automattic, where he spends his time working on partnership and marketing strategies.