Why the WordPress.com connection is important for Jetpack

The Jetpack connection will give your site access to the WordPress.com cloud, unlocking the collective power of thousands of globally distributed servers to provide security, performance and functionality at scale.

Jetpack is a plugin that allows you to use features we developed on WordPress.com on your self-hosted website through the Jetpack plugin. Since these features were built for WordPress.com sites, we need to connect your site via the Jetpack plugin to a WordPress.com account.

Jetpack bridges the gap between your site and the WordPress.com cloud.

The benefits you get from connecting your WordPress.com account to Jetpack are:

Unlocking various features by authorizing Jetpack to perform actions on your behalf. These include Jetpack Social, which automatically shares your site’s posts on multiple social media networks when you publish new content, or getting instant Notifications on your phone when you get new likes and comments.
Access to special tools that exist only on WordPress.com, such as the Activity Log, a comprehensive list of events that have occurred on your site, or Advanced Stats, where you’ll find even more details about visitors, including Views By Country, Unique Views, as well as many more insights about your site.
Using the Jetpack API to authorize Jetpack products and services to securely connect to your site, and offer you new functionality by leveraging the power of the WordPress.com cloud. Backup, for instance, automatically creates a full backup of your site and securely stores it in the cloud, or Search which indexes all your content in the cloud and runs search queries without using any resources on your site.

Which Jetpack features can I use without connecting my WordPress.com account?

By clicking the “Set up Jetpack” button the following features will be made available:

Carousel —Enables any standard WordPress galleries you have embedded in posts or pages to launch a gorgeous full-screen photo browsing experience with comments and EXIF metadata.
Comment Likes — Allows you to like comments and control how Comment Likes appear on your site.
Firewall — Can be used to block/allow a specific request IP or make any rules delivered to the site remain functional after the paid subscription that has a Scan feature lapses or is removed.
Comments — Replaces your default comment form with a new comment system that has integrated social media login options.
Contact Form — Provides an easy option to add and customize contact forms on your site.
Copy Post — Allows you to easily start new posts based on existing posts.
Custom Content Types — Adds custom post types (CPTs) to your site that allow you to add content that doesn’t necessarily fit into a post, but isn’t right for a static page either.
Custom CSS — Allows you to customize the appearance of your theme without the need to create a child theme or worry about theme updates overwriting your customizations.
Extra Sidebar Widgets (Except the Instagram widget) — An easy way to add extra functionality to your site, this feature includes widgets you can add to your blog, including RSS Links to Twitter Timelines and Facebook Like Boxes.
Gravatar Hovercards — The Hovercard is one way your profile is made visible to others on the web. It’s an easy way to help people find your blog, or access your identity on other services like Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin.
Infinite Scroll — This feature pulls the next posts automatically into view when the reader approaches the bottom of the page.
Latex —This is a powerful markup language for writing complex mathematical equations, formulas, and more.
Likes — Provides a way for people to show their appreciation for your posts.
Markdown — Lets you compose posts and comments with links, lists, and other styles using regular characters and punctuation marks.
Related Posts — This feature scans all of your posts’ contents, analyzes it, and uses that to display contextual posts your visitors might be interested in reading after they’re finished with the current post.
SEO Tools — Custom title formats, front-page meta descriptions, and social previews all help to optimize your site for search engines.
Site Accelerator — Helps load pages faster by allowing Jetpack to optimize your images and serve your images and static files (like CSS and JavaScript) from our global network of servers.
SiteMaps — Allows you to generate sitemaps that list each post and page that should be indexed by search engines like Google or Bing.
Sharing — Add sharing buttons to your blog posts that allow your readers the ability to post your content to their networks.
Shortcodes — Allows you to embed videos from YouTube, tweets from Twitter, and other media across the web directly, into your WordPress-powered site.
Shortlinks — A quick way to get short and simple links to your posts and pages using the wp.me domain.
Stats — Lets you know how many visits your site gets, and what posts and pages are the most popular.
Stories — Combine photos and videos to create engaging, tappable, full-screen slideshows on your site’s posts and pages.
Tiled Gallery — Allows you to display your image galleries as a thumbnail grid, tiled mosaic, square tiles, circles, tiled columns or as a slideshow.
Verification Tools — Allows for easier verification of site ownership when used with services provided by Google, Bing, Pinterest, and Yandex.
Widget Visibility — This feature enables you to configure widgets to appear only on certain pages (or be hidden on certain pages) by using the Visibility panel.

Which Jetpack features require a connected WordPress.com account?

The following features require that you authenticate with your WordPress.com account before they are available:

Activity Log — Builds a comprehensive list of all the events that happen on your site.
AI Assistant — Adds AI-powered text generation into your block editor.
Backup — Automatically creates a full backup of your site and stores it in the WordPress.com cloud. Allows one-click restores.
Brute Force Attack Protection — Utilising data from the WordPress.com cloud, this feature protects you against traditional brute force attacks and distributed brute force attacks that use many servers against your site.
Donations – The Donations block lets you add a payment button to any post or page for donations, tips, and other contributions, using Stripe as the payment gateway.
Firewall — Examines incoming traffic to a WP site and decides to allow or block it based on various rules.
Google Analytics — Allows easy integration with Google Analytics using your Google Analytics Measurement ID.
Instagram Widget —Allows you to display an Instagram Box with the latest photos from your account within a widgetized area of your theme.
JSON API — Allows access to WordPress.com’s OAuth2 authentication system and WordPress.com REST API to authorize applications and services to securely connect to your site, offering additional functionality.
Mailchimp: The Mailchimp block allows visitors to join your Mailchimp list.
Monitor — Once activated, our servers will start checking your site every five minutes. If it looks like something’s gone awry, an automated email will be sent to the address in your connected WordPress.com account.
Notifications — New comments and Likes on your connected site can generate notifications in your WordPress.com admin bar, in your browser, and on your mobile device.
Pay with PayPal (paid feature): The Pay with PayPal block lets you add a payment button to any post or page, and immediately start accepting PayPal payments for physical products, digital goods, or donations.
Post by Email — Publish blog posts via email!
Recurring payments (paid feature): The Payments block lets you add a payment button to any post or page. Using Stripe as the payment gateway, you can accept credit or debit cards.
Scan — Automated scanning for security threats, many with one-click fixes.
Search — The WordPress.com cloud indexes all your content and runs search queries without using any resources on your site.
Jetpack Social — Uses the power of the WordPress.com cloud to distribute your new content across your preferred social media networks.
SSO — Using the same log-in credentials you use for WordPress.com, this feature allows you to sign in to your self-hosted sites quickly and securely.
Subscriptions — Allows your visitors to sign up for notifications of your latest posts and comments. Subscriptions are managed via the WordPress.com cloud.
VideoPress — The WordPress.com cloud serves fast video to your viewers no matter where they are.
VideoPress Block (paid feature): Jetpack’s VideoPress block allows you to upload videos from your computer to be hosted on WordPress.com, rather than on your host’s servers.
WordAds — the unique ad program from WordPress.com — is designed to help you generate income from your WordPress site.
WordAds block — The Ad block allows you to insert an Ad unit anywhere within the content of any post or page.
WordPress.com Toolbar — Replaces the default WP Admin bar and offers quick links to the Reader, all your sites, your WordPress.com profile, and notifications.

All other blocks already work with a site-only connection.

See the complete list of Jetpack features.

I want to get the most out of Jetpack. How do I connect my WordPress.com account?

1. Go to the Jetpack menu in your WP Admin dashboard.
2. Scroll down to find the Connections area.
3. Click Connect your WordPress.com account to connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account.