- This topic has 25 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
So I noticed there is some negativity from WordPress operators about using Jetpack. Can you tell me why you will or won't use it?
Because Jetpack will auto install tools that you may not need. This could slow down your site and/or be labor intensive on your server. At least, that has been my experience. 🙂
~Kellie~
I don't use it myself, personally, just because I don't have a need for the functionality it provides.
I've had a number of support questions for the community marketplace themes where there have been plugin conflicts specifically with Jetpack, so that's my only real experience with it.
I am trying to dig into these exact issues. Kellie, can you tell me what Jetpack auto installs?
Susan, there are quite a few options under the hood, what kinds of conflicts were you seeing?
@Mealtog - I didn't usually go into the various options - I usually identified it was Jetpack, and told the user to determine what was and was not working for them.
Having said that, if someone is looking for some specific functionality, I don't have a problem telling them if Jetpack provides it, especially if I know they are already using it on their site.
WOW that you ladies. I am new to Genesis and have the Minimum Pro. My sample site worked well and looked well on my laptop and cell phone. After I installed the Jetpack the site no longer displayed properly on my phone. After deactivating Jetpack it now works well. I am deleting this plug in....THANK YOU!!!!
Jetpack is very bloated - you can disable modules one at a time, but most people don't take the time to do that. When my clients want to use it for stats, I install Jetpack Lite, which contains only stats, wp.me shortlinks, and the extra Jetpack sidebar widgets (each of which can be deactivated if not needed).
Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+Installing and activating the "Manual Control for Jetpack" plugin (http://wordpress.org/plugins/manual-control/) prior to activating Jetpack solves most of the problems since you actually have to manually activate whichever of Jetpack's feature you want.
Unfortunately, judging from the number of downloads, not very many are aware of this plugin that is a must if you really have to have Jetpack.
@sdbroker, yes, indeed very few people know about this manual control for Jetpack. Do you know if this still works if it is activated after Jetpack has been fully installed and activated?
One more vote against Jetpack. I don't know if that behavior is because they've optimized it for use on the WordPress.com sites (which severely restrict what other plugins you can use in the first place), but there really should be more warnings telling people if they start to have performance issues on self-hosted sites, turn off Jetpack first, and go from there.
The only other plugin that slowed my sites down more has been the recent versions of Yoast SEO (which I also won't use anymore).
I was hesitant to use a Co-Authors Plus add-on that would have given me better social share fields for authors on the site because it said it worked with Jetpack. Then someone pointed out that it would work just fine without Jetpack, it just needed Jetpack to be able to let those authors share to their own profiles instead of the site profiles, and that didn't matter for what I needed to use it for. Happy Day for me 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkYou don't need to use all the modules however i do use most of them and my site loads in around 1 second.
Slim Jetpack is another option worth looking at if you don't want to connect to WordPress.com's servers.
You can also drag out several of the individual modules and install them as stand alone plugins.
@Mealtog It will not automatically turn them off once Jetpack has been activated. You'll have to manually deactivate the modules that you don't need. However it solves the problem that most are having since it will keep Jetpack from automatically turning all of them back after an update. Manual Control will keep active only the modules that were active prior to the update.
Brad, Jetpack has always been designed and enhanced over the years for people with single author blogs (hence the focus for so long on Facebook, Tumblr and LinkedIn). Multi-author sites seemed to be an afterthought until within the past year or two, when I'd been managing multiuser sites since 2005. Most of those modules have alternative standalone plugins by third parties that do the job better, so I already have the "modules" I need and don't install the ones I don't need 🙂
And have you noticed that there's always been a big delay between when Jetpack is updated for the newest version of WP and when Slim Jetpack is updated? Might be because they want to "encourage" more people to drop Slim Jetpack and use Jetpack?
I don't understand the love for Jetpack especially from people who've seen it get bloated over the years on levels Microsoft couldn't even imagine, and lures unsuspecting newbies in with its millions of downloads (just like NextGen Gallery), and then those people don't understand why is causes more pain than it's worth (just like NextGen Gallery) because so many other people have downloaded it and used it judging by the stats (just like NextGen Gallery).
Can you tell what two of my biggest plugin disappointments have been over the years? 🙂
I take site operations and performance seriously. I'm not the flashiest designer out there, nowhere close, but I will hunt down a bug, a conflict or a quirk like a bloodhound, and when a plugin stinks up my site, I'm not using it, and I will warn people off of it if they ask me about it.
It's the biggest reason I keep coming back to Genesis themes to build with... it's a solid product, and it wasn't until recently that a few nasty markup related quirks and incompatibilities were introduced that I can't get anyone on the Genesis team to take seriously, and until I learn more about what's happening, and why the HTML5 themes just make the problem worse, I just have to work around it.
Fortunately, my Jetpack workaround is simply not to use it 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark@sdbroker, so install Manual Control, go into settings and you can still disable and manually control Jetpack correct?
It is interesting to hear so many comments good and bad about Jetpack. The auto enable feature is truly horrible in my opinion.
Besides needing some manual controls as sdbroker had suggested, I think if the server can handle the load, Jetpack should not impact the speed of a site. I think this is the case with Brad.
Interesting.
@Mealtog, Yes that is correct. You can still manually enable and disable all Jetpack modules after you install Manual Control.
I read all the bad that is said about Jetpack but in my case, I only use 3 of its modules (Publicize, Sharing & Subscriptions - everything else is turned off) and I see that my site is actually much faster with Jetpack than using 3 other separate plugins for these 3 modules that I use. I guess you either like it or you hate it depending on what modules you want to use... just like W3TC that some people hate it because of its learning curve... never mind its far superiority over other similar plugins.
Hey @sdbroker, are you making fun of me for running Jetpack and W3TC? lol
lol @Mealtog! I'm using them both too... but what do I know? I'm just learning by trial & error... and some GREAT help from this forum as I'm working on my own sites.
hey @sdbroker, where are the controls for Manual Control for Jetpack? There has got to be a standard to load all settings in one single place. Some plugins load their own menu item, some inside tools, some inside settings. What a pain!
@Mealtog There are no controls on the Manual Control plugin. You install it, activate it and forget about it, as all it does is to prevent Jetpack from auto activating its modules during initial installation and plugin updates. All the controls are in the Jetpack plugin.
- The forum ‘General Discussion’ is closed to new topics and replies.