Today’s release of Jetpack 5.3 includes support for PHP 7.1, greater control over the placement of your ads, and several enhancements to the experience viewing and managing your Jetpack site with the WordPress.com visual editor.
Here’s everything you’ll find in this update.
PHP 7.1 compatibility
Sites running PHP 7.1.x with opcache enabled will no longer have any issues when managing their Jetpack site from WordPress.com.
Choose where and how you display ads
Jetpack Premium and Professional customers now have more control over the placement of the ads on their site. We’ve added new options to control where ads appear, along with the option to show multiple ads if you wish.
Visual editor improvements
When managing your Jetpack site from WordPress.com (and using the visual editor), you’ll now have the option to preview it without leaving WordPress.com.
We’ve also updated the WordPress.com Toolbar to include a link to your comments in the My Sites menu.
Various bug fixes
Finally, we’ve resolved a few smaller issues and bugs, including:
- Addressing compatibility issues with plugins using TinyMCE.
- Fixing Contact Form submission emails for sites hosted by SiteGround.
- Fixing an error with the Sitemaps feature when posts or images had special characters in their titles.
- Re-adding a filter for the Widget Visibility feature that was accidentally removed.
Full changelog and thanks
The changelog provides the full list of updates and changes in this release. If you have questions or feedback, please get in touch.
Install Jetpack on your site or upgrade your current version today and let us know what you think.
Thank you to the contributors to this release:
Andrew Munro, Artur Piszek, Ben Dwyer, Brandon Kraft, Copons, Daniel Walmsley, Derek Smart, Derek Springer, Devin Samarin, Elio Rivero, Enej Bajgoric, Eric Binnion, Filipe Varela, George Stephanis, Igor Zinovyev, Jacopo Tomasone, Jeff Bowen, Jeff Golenski, Kirk Wight, Marcin Bot, Marek Hrabe, Marko Andrijasevic, Michael Turk, Miguel Lezama, Mohammad Jangda, Nicole Kohler, Richard Muscat, Rodrigo Iloro, Ryan Kanner, Rocco Tripaldi, Shaun Andrews
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Jetpack 
Glad to hear WordAds is still an active project. But what I personally need to really give it a go is a *no* default placement option and widgets or shortcodes of each size that I would manually place. The default placements can appear a bit heavy handed – I recognize the challenge making them agnostic to fit a variety of themes, but I can do better visually on my own if you give me the opportunity. Thanks for considering!
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Dave,
Yeah, you pretty much described the dilemma with WordAds. 🙂 We wanted to make it as simple as possible so that the majority of our users could take advantage of it with a single click, but the downside there is that it might not be flexible enough for power users such as yourself.
Thanks for your input! 🙂
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This latest update has slow my sites down. With very slow page load & very very slow uploading media. I have had to disable plugin altogether with sites work great again. Shame as it has left me without some functions i needed.
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Sorry to hear that! 😦 If you want, you can reach out to us here:
https://jetpack.com/contact-support/
… and we might be able to help figure out what’s causing the slowness. There are a number of factors that might be contributing.
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Yes, I’ll wait a day or so and activate again to see what happens. I’ll hosting with Go Daddy which can be difficult at times and not the best support in sorting out issues. Over the years with Go Daddy its just a matter of waiting. As I feel its more likely to do with the hosting.
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Why was Omnisearch removed? Do you have any plugin suggestions as a replacement?
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Max,
My understanding (without having participated in the original discussion) is that Omnisearch has consistently seen very little usage for a long time now, and our developers have chosen to focus their efforts elsewhere. As for a replacement plugin, I have not tried any myself, but I think SearchWP or WP Jump Menu might be worth looking into:
https://searchwp.com/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-jump-menu/
Thanks! 🙂
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