Jetpack Is a Plugin That Makes Life Easier for Beginners or People Accustomed to Using WordPress.com
A Long List of Features in One Plugin – Infinite Scroll, Stats, Social Media and More
Jetpack offers a wide variety of easy to install WordPress.com features in a plugin that can be installed on wordpress.org sites.
Add to your WordPress Theme Twenty Twelve site or to any self-hosted site. Instead of adding many of these features by using individual plugins now you get them all with just one plugin. This is especially helpful for first time web creators and beginners who are still becoming familiar with plugins.
More advanced users will find some or many of the features useful. But they will probably also prefer to use many of the other individual, specialized plugins available that are installed one at a time.
For instance, while Jetpack offers social media icons I’m using a plugin that provides a verticle floating sharebar next to the left side of the site that floats in place while readers scroll.
Infinite Scroll from Jetpack Elminates Need to Keep Clicking for the Next Page
You only need to click to activate the features you want to use. The “Infinite Scroll” is especially handy because visitors don’t need to click for the next page.
Jetpack Visitor Stats Offer Some Great Features But You Will Still Need Google Analytics Visitor Stats
Jetpack Stats offer real time numbers of visits to your website, posts and page articles visited with the number of visits to each, keywords used by visitors to arrive at your site, and search engines used to arrive at the site. Based on my Jetpack stats I have already created special articles to address popular keyword searches used used and to add articles to subjects that are in demand. I can get this information from Google Stats too but it is nice to have it instantly on my WordPress dashboard.
Different site analytics counts visitors several different ways. For instance, Google Analytics counts a visitor who arrives and tracks that same visitor for an hour so that visitor can go off the site to the site’s social media or to related links from the site and then come back. It still counts as one visit and one unique visitor. Hits or views versus unique visitor numbers provide different ways to analyze the stats. Jetpack does not show unique visitors but appears to show total view stats.
But all these visits on and off the site do not count up as separate visits for one hour. They only count as one visit. With Jetpack the visits appear to be counted independently as on my site Jetpack showed a visitor stat count showing one third more visits as the visits on Google Analytics.
Of course admin visits are removed from Jetpack stats by going to settings and on Google Analytics they are removed with a filter.
Google Analytics of course provides many times richer variety of stats than Jetpack about demographics, content, time on site, and so on. You can always use both.
It’s important to be using the extensive data of Google Analytics but having the Jetpack stats on the dashboard provides convenient real time visitors stats, referrers, top post and page visits, and incoming search engine terms.
Jetpack Social Media Share and Follow Buttons are Located Under “Publicize” in the Jetpack Settings
Please see the article on Jetpack Social Media Share and Follow Buttons for a detailed list of steps and information. I am using the social media share buttons at the bottom of each article. You can choose to hide them behind one single button labeled Share that opens when an arrow is clicked to show all the buttons. You can also choose as I did to just show them so they are instantly visible. Some people may also want to use a floating vertical share bar on the left side of the site so if readers do not read all the way to the bottom of the article they can still click to share it.
Install Jetpack and Click to Choose the Features You Wish to Add to Your Site
Jetpack Features Include:
1. Notifications – tools for managing site activity
2. Vsitor statistics – add to your dashboard, for more in depth stats us google analytics too
3. Publicize by using social media – connect and share with social media
4. Comments for posts and pages – a new system with social media logins too
5. Subscriptions – readers can use it to subscribe to posts and comments
6. Image carousel – set up an image gallery carousel
7. Post by email – update your site by email
8. Sharing by social media – described as a new super sharing tool for social media
9. Spelling and grammar check – how many times have we missed spelling errors on our sites?
10. Vaultpress back-up – easily back up your site
11. Gravatar hovercards – shows users business card in a pop up in the comments
12. Contact form – users easily contact you
13. Shortlinks – easier for sharing on social media
14. Mobile theme adaptation – Adapt any theme for mobile
15. css customize without modifying theme
16. Shortcode embeds
17. Beautiful maths to make equations look good in posts
18. Extra sidebar widgets – How often have we wished for an extra widget or two?
19. Infinite scroll – No need to click for next page, it just keeps scrolling.
20. Photon for photos – New tool for photos
21. json api for accessing your site through the cloud
22. Enhanced distribution sharing posts and comments in real time – Real time, sounds interesting.
23. Mobile push notifications – receive notifications on your apple device – great for keeping up with comments and other site activity.