If you’re creating WordPress websites for clients, Jetpack adds a number of features to your client sites without the need for a dozen different plugins — reducing the technical debt that you need to maintain, and saving you time and your clients money. Here are some of our favorite tips for using Jetpack to streamline your work with clients.
Continue reading → Using Jetpack for Client Sites – Updates and Improvements
Using Jetpack for Client Sites – Updates and Improvements
Posted in Tips & Tricks
Tagged client work, clients, developer, development, development mode, Manage, staging, staging mode, staging server
5 Comments
“Hear it from us first”: Why every site should run Jetpack
Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimise your site on various fronts: traffic, development and user experience amongst others. There is one feature however which I feel is critical: Jetpack Monitor. Simply put, Jetpack Monitor keeps tabs on your site and alerts you the moment that downtime is detected.
Like a lot of people who work in web, before I joined the Jetpack team I did quite a bit of client work: both freelance and at agencies. For me the absolute worst thing in this business is receiving a call from a client, most likely while you’re relaxing on a beach or just waking up, desperately asking you to fix her site because she’s losing money, clients or brand value while her site is down.
Jetpack Monitor might not do away with the frantic scrabbling you’ll need to do to fix the site but it will put you back in the driving seat. Because you get notified first you can turn the tables around and call your client yourself, calmly saying “Hey, as I’ve been keeping tabs on your site I noticed it just went down 10 seconds ago. Don’t panic, I’m on it.” At times the problem might even be a trivial one meaning that you can actually call your client and say that its already sorted!
Of course the same applies if you maintain your own site. You’ll get notified by us rather than by one of readers (or customers) making it more likely you can fix the problem before it affects too many of your users.
That’s it. With Jetpack Monitor, if your site goes down, you’ll hear it from us first.
Its entirely likely, indeed desirable, that you will turn this feature on when you install Jetpack and then never think about it again. But if, for whatever reason, your site or your client’s site does go down you will be thanking your lucky stars this feature is enabled.
Try Jetpack for yourself by connecting it to your site or by downloading the plugin files directly if you prefer that route. Oh, and do let us know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions.
Interview: Andrea Barghigiani on Jetpack
Andrea is a long-time WordPress user and runs the popular WordPress blog wpAndMore aimed at Italian WP users and developers. We got in touch with him recently to find out what he thinks about our Jetpack plugin. Andrea lives in Italy and can be found on Twitter @Andrea_AndMore.
Who is Andrea?
What do you do for a living?
For the last five years I’ve been developing WordPress themes and plugins. Recently I began to teach other people how to develop with this platform via articles and video tutorials on wpAndMore.info.
What’s the best thing about your job?
In a nutshell, that I can use WordPress to satisfy the requests of my clients 🙂
How did you first start using WordPress?
I’ve been using WordPress since version 2.7. At the time I was looking for a framework/platform able to help me speed up my develop process and give more power to my clients – WordPress was the best fit.
Thoughts on Jetpack
How’d you first find out about Jetpack?
I always keep myself always updated about WordPress news and I think I read about it on the WPTavern blog (even if I can’t be so sure!). Since then I’ve installed it on more than ten WordPress sites.
What’s the one Jetpack feature you couldn’t do without? Why?
My favourite is the Related Posts feature. I like it because it decreases my bounce rate (I can show more articles to my hungry readers when they finish reading one post) and because it does not stress my server in doing so.
What do you think of the the Jetpack setup process: Easy, hard?
The setup process is very simple, all you need is a WordPress.com account and you’re ready to go!
What do you value about Jetpack?
Based on the kind of site, Jetpack helps me in many ways. First and foremost it helps me keep my installations more organized and streamlined, since I have to install less plugins. Jetpack also helps me run the sites even faster with the CDN options (Photon) that it provides.
Working with Clients
Do you generally recommend Jetpack?
Well, looking at the latest improvements, in my opinion Jetpack is a must-have plugin. The various features improve our WordPress installations in many ways, starting from the social aspect (like the social buttons or the amazing Publicize feature) to the more text based ones (like LaTeX and the After the Deadline integration).
Does Jetpack help you with client work?
Sure! Unsurprisingly, my clients are usually happy to install something for free that will give them loads of features. Photon, Carousel and Tiled Galleries are always welcomed by them and the social feature integrations I mentioned previously are very useful in helping them with promoting their sites and content.
Jetpack Frustrations
What frustrates you about Jetpack? Why?
If I have to be honest, the only thing it frustrates me is right after install. By default Jetpack activates several modules that I do not need and I have to disable them one by one each time I install it. But I mean, it’s not a big deal 😉
What would you like to improve?
Apart from the above (ie: letting me activate only the modules I need) I’d love it if you could implement a bit of AJAX technology, so I do not have to refresh the page each time I activate or deactivate a module.
Get involved!
Try it out
If you’ve not used Jetpack before, read our step-by-step installation guide here to try it out for yourself.
Contribute
If you are a Jetpack user already please tell us what you think in the comments and, if you’d like to get involved yourself by writing a guest post about Jetpack or being interviewed yourself, get in touch!
Interview: How Paul Jarvis works with Jetpack
We got in touch with one of our users Paul Jarvis to find out what he thinks of the Jetpack plugin – how it has helped him and what he’d like to see in a new version. Paul is a freelance web designer/developer as well as an author of various popular books who’s been using WordPress since before he was born.
Paul lives in British Columbia, Canada. You can stalk him on Twitter @pjrvs or read about his books and work on his website.
Who is Paul?
What do you do for a living?
I’m a freelance web designer/developer and author. I’ve built websites for 20 years and written books for the last 4.
What’s the best thing about your job?
I can set my own hours and stop working when I’ve made enough for the year (typically 3-4 months off per year).
How did you first start using WordPress?
I’ve been using WordPress since sometime in early 2004. For client websites, I jumped on the bandwagon early of doing whatever I could to let clients update their own content on their site. This gave me more time to focus on design/development and less time doing tiny updates of content.
Thoughts on Jetpack
How’d you first find out about Jetpack?
I live and breathe WordPress so it’s hard to miss things like this! Since I began using Jetpack I’ve installed it on at least 30 sites – practically every site I’ve built for a client since 2011.
What’s the one Jetpack feature you couldn’t do without? Why?
Stats. Both for myself and for my clients, the stats page is such a perfect example of a single screen that gives a ton of information.
What do you think of the the Jetpack setup process: Easy, hard?
Easier now that the setup has been re-designed. The settings are much better now making it quicker to customize what modules I want and which I don’t but I still have to go through disabling the pieces I don’t want (which are the same for every site) for each setup.
What do you value about Jetpack?
Like I mentioned, the stats are great. But other things I use are: sharing, subscriptions, spelling, contact form, related posts. These are all added value for the sites I make for clients.
Working with Clients
Does Jetpack affect your work with clients?
Clients all ask for things like easy stats, related posts, sharing buttons – so Jetpack lets me add those things in a few seconds.
Can you think of a cool thing Jetpack helped you do for clients?
I use stats to teach my clients the basis of using metrics for their business. How to look for trends in popular content, how to spot where most of their traffic comes from and how to gauge what content is working the most for them (so they can create more or related content). For a developer it seems like very basic stuff, but for a non-technical client, this is very important for their business.
Jetpack Frustrations
What frustrates you about Jetpack? Why?
Previously it was the setup and taking a LONG time to disable all the modules I didn’t want, but now it’s much easier and quicker although it can still stand some improvement.
What would you like to improve?
If there was a way to save my “favourite modules” so on any new install I could pick my profile and those modules were activated – that’d be BOSS.
Get involved!
Try it out
If you’ve not used Jetpack before, read our step-by-step installation guide here to try it out for yourself.
Contribute
If you are a Jetpack user already please tell us what you think in the comments and, if you’d like to get involved yourself by writing a guest post about Jetpack or being interviewed yourself, get in touch!
