New Release: Jetpack 9.3

Jetpack 9.3 has been deployed to all VIP Go sites.

What is being added or changed?

This release brings many updates behind the scenes, improving site stability and optimizing performance of some of your favorites like the slideshow, podcast player, and subscription blocks.

For more details about this release (including specific changes), please see the release notes and the commit log.

Questions?

If you have any questions, related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.

Call for Testing: Jetpack 8.9 (Beta)

Jetpack 8.9 will be deployed to VIP Go on Thursday, September 3rd, 2020. The upgrade is expected to be performed at 15:00 UTC (11:00am EDT). This deployment date and time is subject to change if issues are discovered during testing of the Jetpack release.

The beta for Jetpack 8.9  is available now, and the download link is at the top of the beta release notice.

What is being added or changed?

Blocks

Donations

The new Donations Block allows you to easily accept and process donations on your site.

To give it a try, open the Block editor and try to add a Donations block to your post. Let us know what you think!

Social Previews

You can now preview how your posts will look on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Search Results even before you hit the Publish button.

Check this out from the Jetpack sidebar appearing in the block editor.

Form

In this release, we’ve added 3 things to the Form block:

• A new “Consent” field you can add to any new or existing form.
• A new “Newsletter Sign-up” form option offered to you when you create a new form, to save you some time if you plan to use your form to collect email addresses.
• A new panel in the block’s sidebar to help you integrate the Form block with a plugin that handles newsletter sign-ups, Creative Mail. In that panel, you will have the option to install and activate the plugin if you do not use it on your site yet.

You can try to use those new options and let us know if everything works well.

Connection

We’ve made a number of changes to better couple your site’s connection to WordPress.com with the status of features like Protect, Monitor, SSO, Subscriptions, or Stats on your site.

To test this, on a new or existing site, ensure that toggling those features on and off still works, and that the features themselves still work.

A full list of changes is available in the release notes and the commit log.

What do I need to do?

We recommend:

1. Installing the beta release on your non-production sites using these instructions.
2. Running through the testing flows outlined in the Jetpack Testing Guide.

As you’re testing a few things to keep in mind:

• Check your browser’s JavaScript console and see if there are any errors reported by Jetpack there.
• Use “Debug Bar” or “Query Monitor” to help make PHP notices and warnings more noticeable and report anything you see.

Questions?

If you have testing feedback or questions related to this release (or Jetpack in general), please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.

Jetpack 8.8.1 Release

Jetpack 8.8.1 has been deployed to all VIP Go sites.

What is being added or changed?

Jetpack 8.8.1 is fully compatible with WordPress 5.5. There are also a few other notable improvements:

• The plugin is 25% lighter. Improvements to Jetpack’s internationalization allow us to fully rely on language packs offered by translate.wordpress.org. As a result, the Jetpack plugin itself has about 150 fewer files, which will especially improve performance during plugin updates on limited server environments.
• We’ve improved the connection process. You’ll now see an option to reconnect your site to WordPress.com if it ever gets disconnected, and the error messages are clearer so you understand exactly how to fix them.

For more details about this release (including specific changes), please see the release notes for version 8.8 and release notes for version 8.8.1 and the commit log. Note: Jetpack 8.8.1 was a smaller release, so it was deployed to the platform as well.

Questions?

If you have any questions, related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.

Jetpack 8.8 Release Rescheduled

Jetpack 8.8 has been rescheduled for release on Thursday, August 13th, 2020 at 15:00 UTC (11:00am ET). This version of Jetpack is fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress, 5.4, and requires WordPress 5.4 or above.

What is being added or changed?

Jetpack 8.8 is fully compatible with the upcoming WordPress 5.5 release. There are also a few other notable improvements:

• The plugin is 25% lighter. Improvements to Jetpack’s internationalization allow us to fully rely on language packs offered by translate.wordpress.org. As a result, the Jetpack plugin itself has about 150 fewer files, which will especially improve performance during plugin updates on limited server environments.
• We’ve improved the connection process. You’ll now see an option to reconnect your site to WordPress.com if it ever gets disconnected, and the error messages are clearer so you understand exactly how to fix them.

For more details about this release (including specific changes), please see the release notes and the commit log.

What do I need to do?

We recommend:

1. Installing the beta release on your non-production sites using these instructions.
2. Running through the testing flows outlined in the Jetpack Testing Guide.

As you’re testing a few things to keep in mind:

• Check your browser’s JavaScript console and see if there are any errors reported by Jetpack there.
• Use “Debug Bar” or “Query Monitor” to help make PHP notices and warnings more noticeable and report anything you see.

Questions?

If you have any questions, related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.