What’s the deal with usernames?!?

Since Jetpack uses some of the resources of WordPress.com, it is required that you have a WordPress.com account to use all of the features.

If you’re new to WordPress, some hosting companies will preinstall the Jetpack plugin for you. Jetpack is an add-on (a “Plugin” in WordPress language) that adds a whole slew of extra features to your site, provided by WordPress.com — a fully-hosted version of WordPress (the software you installed with your hosting company).

Thus, you may have a slew of usernames and passwords associated with your account. What are they all?

Your Hosting Provider

Your hosting provider, a company like Bluehost, Hostgator, WP Engine, Dreamhost, or many, many others, will give you an account that you use to log in to your control panel. Depending on the company, this is where you access error logs, the server’s file manager, e-mail settings, billing information, and often more.

Self-hosted WordPress Install

WordPress sits on top of the server managed by your hosting company but isn’t integrated into your hosting company’s control panel. Because of this, a separate username and password are used to actually “log into your site”, create posts or pages, moderate comments, and more.

Jetpack and WordPress.com

When you first connect Jetpack to WordPress.com, you’re asked for another username and password for WordPress.com. This isn’t the same as the one you use to log into your site. This one is specifically for WordPress.com.

You’ll use your WordPress.com username and password for a few different things:

• Initial setup of Jetpack;
• Logging in to see the enhanced stats information for your site (hosted on WordPress.com servers);
• Setting up Gravatar — an online profile that also provides the avatars next to your name when you comment (on your site, any other WordPress site, and a number of other services);
• Your Akismet account. Akismet is the spam-blocking service that you can add to your site to keep spam comments out of your hair. It is another pre-installed plugin on your site, but to activate it, you’ll use your WordPress.com username and password to set it up;
• And more!

Mostly, you’ll use your WordPress website admin username and password, but keep your hosting company and WordPress.com credentials handy!