Jetpack is a WordPress plugin which I would describe as a “must-have luxury plugin.” That is, it does not fall within the category of “essential plugins,” so your site can survive without it. Nevertheless, it brings features and functionalities that you wouldn’t want to miss.
The jetpack plugin outfits your blog with a wide range of features. Some of its most awesome functionalities include:
Site Stats: See how many hits your site got each day. Site stats will even show you which page or post was accessed how many times, where your visitors are coming from, eg Google, Facebook, etc, and what keyword they typed in to find your site on Google. Site stats allows you to review data over a week, day, month, all time, etc.
Downtime Monitoring. Get alerted by email if your website goes down. This could happen if your website is hacked or crashed, if you have used up the monthly bandwidth allotted by your webhost, or if your webhost has problems. You’ll have to switch on this option manually under Settings.
Site Accelerator. Turn on the “Enable Site Accelerator” button to help speed up your website. This falls under Settings >> Performance.
Copy entire pages and posts including settings and tags by turning on this option under Settings >> Writing >> Composing.
Extra Widgets. Jetpack adds some extra widgets for use on your website if you turn on this option under Settings >> Writing >> Widgets.
Like Button. Sure, there is plugin to add the Facebook Like Button and other social media buttons to every post and page. But those buttons only allow people who are logged into those social media sites to like your post or page. What if you wanted a Like button for every post or page that works independently of third party sites? Jetpack got your covered. Turn this on by going to Settings >> Sharing >> Like Buttons.
Sitemaps. Sitemaps help your site rank better in search engines. Creating a sitemap was once hard work. Jetpack can create sitemaps for your website that the search engines love, and update those sitemaps automatically when your site changes. All you have to do is turn on the option by going to Jetpack Settings >> Sitemap.
With that being said, there are some Jetpack features that I wouldn’t activate because I choose to use different, superior plugins for. For example:
I wouldn’t use the Jetpack comments form enhancement feature because it had proven problematic in the past, and my experience is that WP Discuz is a superior plugin for enhancement the WordPress Comments Functionality.
I also wouldn’t turn on the “Related Posts” option because I choose to use a better plugin for that.
Bruteforce Protection is another WordPress feature that I choose to forego. This option, when turned on, will help to defend your site against hackers trying to guess your username and password through multiple, automated, and random attempts. Personally, I switch this option off because I use what I consider a superior plugin for this: Loginizer – which I listed in my article “Some Essential WordPress Plugins.”
So, if you’re building a new blog, go right ahead and outfit it with Jetpack.