One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is the ability to create a beautiful, compelling website with little to no coding knowledge. With hundreds of professional themes and the flexible, drag-and-drop block editor, it’s an excellent solution for DIY website owners.
But what if you want to go a step further and make more in-depth visual customizations? CSS is one of the fastest ways to change your website’s appearance.
Continue reading → Simple CSS Tips for DIY Website Owners
Jetpack is well known for its image CDN, backup features, and stats, but did you know it also offers more than 30 other ways to customize your website? With a modular approach — no features are automatically enabled, and you choose which items to turn on individually — it adds features without loading unnecessary code, so your website runs efficiently.
Continue reading → How to Customize a WordPress Site with Jetpack
Today’s release of Jetpack 5.5 includes some changes to the Jetpack connection process meant to reduce issues and plugin interference. We’ve also prioritized compatibility with the upcoming release of WordPress 4.9, which is currently scheduled for release on November 14.
Let’s take a closer look at what we’ve included in this update.
We’ve made some changes to the connection process between Jetpack and WordPress.com. These changes should reduce the number of issues that may happen on a site when switching from a HTTP to HTTPS connection.
We’ve also improved this process to make sure that other WordPress plugins can’t interfere with your connection and accidentally disable features that rely on the WordPress.com servers (like our image CDN, Related Posts, etc.).
The next major version of WordPress, 4.9, is currently scheduled to be released next week, November 14 (but you can try a release candidate right now!). 4.9 will include a lot of changes to its code editors, like syntax highlighting, linting, and auto-completion.
As part of those changes, the built-in CSS editor will now have its own syntax highlighter. Until now, this feature wasn’t available unless you used Jetpack and its Custom CSS module. So from now on, Jetpack will let WordPress handle syntax highlighting if you run version 4.9.
The Gallery Widget provided by Jetpack will also be obsoleted by the 4.9 update, which will include its own Gallery Widget.
When you update to WordPress 4.9, we’ll automatically migrate any Jetpack Gallery Widgets to WordPress ones (as seen here).
If you use any Jetpack Gallery Widgets on your site, they will be automatically migrated and become WordPress Gallery Widgets once you update to WordPress 4.9.
You shouldn’t see any major changes to your Jetpack widgets with the migration. However, if you use plugins that enable additional widget settings (not provided as part of Jetpack), you could lose these settings due to the way those plugins store the data. You can avoid this by using a new Jetpack filter to force the legacy code to load and then migrate your settings to 4.9 manually.
Finally, let’s wrap things up with a few additional enhancements you may want to be aware of:
(`jetpack_google_translate_widget_layout`), has been added to the Google Translate Widget to allow you to change its layout.As always, the changelog provides the full list of updates and changes in this release. If you have questions or feedback, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to lend a hand.
Install Jetpack on your site or upgrade to 5.5 today and let us know how it goes!
Adrien Missemer, Allen Snook, Brandon Kraft, Daniel Swiatek, Daniel Walmsley, Demitrious Kelly, Derek Smart, Elio Rivero, Enej Bajgoric, Eric Binnion, George Stephanis, Igor Zinovyev, Jacopo Tomasone, Jason Johnston, Jeremy Herve, Jonathan Sadowski, Kirk Wight, Marko Andrijasevic, Michael Turk, Miguel Lezama, Miklos Juhasz, Nick Daugherty, Oscar Lopez, Paul Sieminski, RC Lations, Rich Collier, Rob Landers, Rocco Tripaldi, Rodrigo Iloro, Scott Stancil, Weston Ruter, and Yoav Farhi.
Jetpack 4.4.2 is a small but important release that provides compatibility with WordPress 4.7, the latest version of WordPress that was released this week.
The Custom CSS feature in Jetpack is now integrated in the new Customizer-based CSS editor introduced in WordPress 4.7.
Jetpack’s Custom CSS was very useful for making small (or more significant) changes to your site’s CSS without needing to modify your theme files or create a custom child theme. With WordPress 4.7 introducing the Additional CSS feature, we wanted to make sure that people previously using Jetpack’s Custom CSS can still use the edits they’ve made in the past and use this new WordPress CSS editor seamlessly in the future.
We’ve also shipped a number of other enhancements and bug fixes in this release. A few highlights include:
wp-missed-schedule plugin.If you’d like to see the full list of the updates and changes to this version of Jetpack, you can check the full changelog here.
We hope you’ll love the new Jetpack features and improvements! Install it on your site or upgrade your current version today and let us know what you think. As always, your feedback is extremely important to us and you can send it directly through our Support contact form.
A special thank you to the contributors to this release – thanks for helping make Jetpack better:
Benyamin Shoham, Brandon Kraft, Daniel Walmsley, Derek Smart, Elio Rivero, Enej Bajgoric, Eric Binnion, George Stephanis, Igor Zinovyev, Jeremy Herve, Rich Collier, Sam Hotchkiss, Steve Seear, and Timmy Crawford.
If you’ve ever tried to make changes to the appearance of your site, you’ve probably discovered that you can do so using CSS. In this article, we’ll give an overview of what CSS is, how Jetpack can help you get started with CSS customizations, and a few links to helpful resources to learn more.
Continue reading → Custom CSS: The Basics
Howdy Jetpackers,
You might already be familiar with the Mobile Theme module: it displays your content in a clean, uncluttered interface for phones, making it easy visitors to access your latest post on the go.
If you have enabled the Mobile Theme module, your mobile visitors see a fresh blue home page:
But did you know you could customize the look of this Mobile Theme? With a few simple changes, bring your site’s mobile experience more in line with the full-screen version. Your can customize both the kinds of content that appear on your mobile home page and the colors and header.
The Mobile Theme includes two home page options:
Access these options by clicking on Configure under the Mobile Theme module in the Jetpack menu.
It does use a lovely shade of blue, but what if the Mobile Theme could use the same color scheme as your desktop theme? The same header and background? Luckily, you can do just that — and more!
We’ll go through three ways to customize the Mobile Theme. Depending on what you want to do and how comfortable you are with code, you can make changes through the Customizer, with CSS, or with actions and filters.
If your theme features a Custom Background or a Custom Header, the images or colors will automatically be ported over to the Mobile Theme, no additional work needed.
To get started with headers and backgrounds, go to Appearance >> Themes in your dashboard, and click “Customize”:
If your desktop theme supports them, you’ll be able to specify a custom header or a custom background for your desktop and Jetpack’s Mobile theme.
Jetpack includes a module named Custom CSS that allows you to add your own CSS code without having to edit your theme stylesheet. The custom CSS editor is available under Appearance >> Edit CSS in your dashboard.
You may have used it to make changes to your desktop theme, but it also includes a Mobile-compatible option:
If you choose the mobile compatible option, all your custom CSS will also apply to the Mobile theme.
You can also use CSS to make changes that are specific to the Mobile theme. To do that, use the .mobile-theme class to target only the Mobile theme.
Jetpack’s Mobile theme, like other themes and plugins, uses actions and filters to add data and features to your site. If you want to remove or edit some of the mobile theme’s functions, you can build a small plugin.
Here is a small example: we will add post authors’ Gravatar images before each post on the mobile home page. To do this, we’ll create a new function named jetpackme_author_image, and we will hook that function into the the_content filter.
// Check if we are on mobile
function jetpackme_is_mobile() {
// Are Jetpack Mobile functions available?
if ( ! function_exists( 'jetpack_is_mobile' ) )
return false;
// Is Mobile theme showing?
if ( isset( $_COOKIE['akm_mobile'] ) && $_COOKIE['akm_mobile'] == 'false' )
return false;
return jetpack_is_mobile();
}
// Let's add the post author's Gravatar image, but only if we're on a mobile device
function jetpackme_maybe_add_filter() {
// On mobile, and on the home page?
if ( jetpackme_is_mobile() && is_home() ) {
add_filter( 'the_content', 'jetpackme_author_image' );
}
}
add_action( 'wp_head', 'jetpackme_maybe_add_filter' );
// Build the function
function jetpackme_author_image( $content ) {
global $post;
$avatar = get_avatar( $post->post_author );
return $avatar . $content;
}
You could use a similar method to add, edit, or remove features from the Mobile theme. (If you do, please let us know about the cool things you built with the Jetpack Mobile Theme!)
Is there anything else you’d like to know about Jetpack’s Mobile Theme? Is there a particular Jetpack module you’d like to learn more about? Let us know!
Posting photo galleries on your WordPress blog is a fun way to share your experiences with the world, but do plain old thumbnail grids truly express your artistic side? No, they don’t. That’s why we’ve added tiled galleries to Jetpack.
Tiled galleries allow you to create beautiful photo mosaics for your blog posts. Just activate the Tiled Gallery module (and optionally set the tiled layout as the default) to create gorgeous galleries in seconds. Your friends will envy you, and your enemies will fear you.
You might be thinking, “Are tiled galleries the only new feature in Jetpack 2.1? If they are, that’s certainly understandable, because it’s an amazing addition to an already feature-rich plugin.” No, tiled galleries are not the only new feature; we’ve also added a slideshow mode for galleries. Just choose Slideshow from the Type dropdown when creating your gallery, and you’ll instantly have a dynamic photo display. Slideshows and tiled galleries both look amazing on mobile devices, and they both integrate seamlessly with the Carousel module.
In addition to giving you new ways to show off your photographs, we’ve spent a lot of time fixing bugs, too. Photon, Infinite Scroll, Publicize, Sharing, and the Contact Form modules have all been given some TLC, and the Custom CSS editor has been updated. For a complete list of changes, see the changelog.
Update: Jetpack 2.1.1 has been released to fix a bug that was preventing updates from Jetpack 1.9.2 and older.
This release continues to refine Jetpack’s handling of images in Photon (our image accelerator) and enhances theme and plugin compatibility with Infinite Scroll.
Jetpack’s Custom CSS Editor also gets a major overhaul for this release. The editing experience is now more streamlined and supports Sass and LESS as alternatives to traditional CSS. Write your site’s styles in your preferred language, and Jetpack handles the rest.
Those are the highlights, but this release also fixes many other issues you reported. For a complete list of changes, see the official Jetpack Changelog.
The update will be available in your WordPress dashboard shortly. Alternatively, you can always download the latest version of Jetpack here at jetpack.me.
Remember these fixes are made possible by bug reports submitted by you (thanks!), so please contact support or post in the support forum if you need help.
Five Things You Didn’t Know Jetpack Could Do
How well do you think you know Jetpack? Most people know about Stats, Publicize, and Sharing. You may even have your own personal favorite module like Tiled Galleries or Subscriptions. But what about the rest of Jetpack? Here are five things you might not know you can do:
Continue reading → Five Things You Didn’t Know Jetpack Could Do