New Jetpack release including site monetization tools, ad-free video hosting, new shortcodes and sidebar widgets.
Welcome to Jetpack 4.5, available now for upgrade or installation. We’re starting the year in style with some very exciting additions and improvements that we can’t wait for you to try. This release includes:
- Jetpack Ads (WordAds)
- Brand new VideoPress
- New shortcode support
- More sidebar widgets
- An update to our Terms of Service
Jetpack Ads (WordAds)
Jetpack Ads is a new, one-click simple feature designed to help you generate income from your WordPress site. Jetpack Ads is powered by WordAds — the unique ad program from WordPress.com designed exclusively for WordPress sites. Not only do we provide high quality ads, but after working with tens of thousands of users we have determined the best placements to guarantee both the highest revenue and most reliable compatibility across most WordPress themes.
Jetpack Ads is instantly available to all users who have purchased the Jetpack Premium plan — no approval process required. Once you’ve purchased the plan, activate the feature in the Engagement tab within Jetpack. You’ll start seeing ads on your site right away, and can tweak ad placement settings and view your earnings on WordPress.com.
Brand new VideoPress
VideoPress is an ad-free, high-quality (HD) video hosting and streaming service designed for WordPress. We think it’s the easiest way to upload and share videos to the web while retaining full brand control on your site (i.e., no ads!).
Over the past few months, we’ve rebuilt the VideoPress integration with Jetpack from the ground up. When you start using it, you’ll notice:
- No more complicated signup process — it just works.
- Full integration with your media library — if you know how to insert an image, you now know how to insert videos with VideoPress.
- The ability to upload videos from the Media Library or directly from the Post Editor.
You can view and edit video meta data from the edit media page in the Media Library, and insert uploaded videos into any post or page.
VideoPress is available to all users on the Jetpack Premium plan (limited to 13Gb) and those on the Jetpack Professional plan (unlimited).
New shortcode support
All users have access to fourteen new shortcodes that have been available on WordPress.com for a while. These new shortcodes enable you to embed content from services like Twitter and Spotify directly into a post or page.
An example of a Spotify embed using our new shortcode
The new shortcodes are:
More sidebar widgets
We’ve added quite a few new widgets for your WordPress site sidebars and footers:
- Authors: display your authors on the front end of your site. Note: this widget doesn’t come with much styling, so it is up to the theme/user to style as desired.
- Blog Stats: a simple stat counter to display page views on the front end of your site.
- Milestone: adds a countdown to an upcoming event or milestone that you designate.
Update to our Terms of Service
We’ve updated our Terms of Service to include a Jetpack-specific section that describes Jetpack, clarifies how features within Jetpack work, and links to a support document that outlines what information and content is synced to our servers when you use Jetpack. Please give it a read and let us know if you have any questions.
As always, you can take a look at the revision history to see exactly what has changed.
These changes will take effect on March 1, 2017. By using Jetpack after this date, you agree to our updated Terms of Service.
Full changelog and thanks
If you’d like to see the full list of the updates and changes to this version of Jetpack, you can read the full changelog.
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:
Ajk Palikuqi, Andrew Duthie, Bartek Wilczek, Benyamin Shoham, Brandon Kraft, Carolyn Sonnek, Dan Wyman, Daniel Walmsley, Derek Smart, Derek Springer, Drew Butler, Elio Rivero, Enej Bajgoric, Eric Binnion, George Stephanis, Ignacio Cruz, Igor Zinovyev, Jake Oehler Morrison, James Nylen, Jared Wenerd, Jeff Golenski, Jeremy Herve, Josh Betz, Lance Willett, Marcus Kazmierczak, Marin Atanasov, Mark George, Michael Arestad, Michael Torbert, Miguel Lezama, Nicola Heald, Oscar Lopez, Patrick Rauland, Rastislav Lamos, Rich Collier, Richard Muscat, Ross Wintle, Sam Hotchkiss, Stanimir Dinov, Steve Seear, Stuart Dum, Thomas Guillot, Timmy Crawford, Weston Ruter, Xiao Yu, Yoga Sukma
