Posts tagged “jetpack”

Did you know you can disable Jetpack’s Downtime Monitoring module using the ever-so-useful WP-CLI? Perhaps you’re doing some routine Website Maintenance and don’t want to be barraged by emails alerting you to the planned website downtime (and if you’re the type to never do maintenance on your website, you really should think about starting).

As divisive as the Jetpack WordPress plugin is, the Downtime Monitoring module is an easy, free way to be alerted when your WordPress website goes down. The problem is that Jetpack has been very indecisive about how to allow users to disable the Downtime Monitoring module.

Currently you can toggle it from your WordPress Admin but previous versions redirected you to the linked WordPress.com account where, in my experience anyway, it failed more often than not. So if you’ve been having trouble disabling the Downtime Monitor and if you happen to have WP-CLI installed (why wouldn’t you?), you can use this nifty command:

wp jetpack module deactivate monitor

Simple, isn’t it? Just don’t forget to turn it back on when you’re done!

Sometimes all you need is a simple plugin to add custom CSS to WordPress websites. Heaven knows there’s no lack of them in the WordPress repository.

I prefer to keep all CSS in the theme’s folder but sometimes I need to add some custom CSS on-the-fly without having to go through the trouble of updating the actual theme code. Maybe the client has reported a visual anomaly or I spotted something off while browsing their website. Either way, it’s much easier to log into the WordPress admin and add the CSS code. Migrating it to the theme can be done at a properly scheduled time.

I’m not sure if this is a brand-spanking new feature or if I just missed it but using JetPack you can now update WordPress Plugins across all your websites through your WordPress.com My Sites Dashboard. What’s even more interesting is that you can set plugins to auto-update.

Right now this feature is limited only to Plugins — no updating Themes or the base WordPress installation.WordPress already auto-update (unless disabled) so I doubt this will ever be offered. I wonder if we’ll eventually see the option of updating Themes through WordPress.com.

There are already a few services out there that’ll help you manage all your WordPress websites. Here are a few that I know of in alphabetical order:

• InfiniteWP
• iThemes Sync
• ManageWP
• WPRemote

More information can be found on the Site Management support page. And be sure to turn on the JSON API.

I can’t change anything when I try to manage my sites on WordPress.com.
You need to enable site management on your Jetpack-connected site from the dashboard by either opting in as mentioned above, or by enabling it under the JSON API settings in Jetpack → Settings → JSON API → Configure and checking the box for the “Allow remote management of themes, plugins, and WordPress via the JSON API” option and saving your changes.

So I was doing routine maintenance on the Caveena Website today when a conflict between two WordPress plugins mucked up our Portfolio page. Being a service-based organization, yeah that’s a pretty big deal.

And this is why I always test website updates on a development server.

So what happened? The issue was between BestWebSoft’s Portfolio Plugin (which, as you probably guessed, we are using for our Portfolio page) and Jetpack. The v3.1 release of Jetpack comes with a new custom post type: Portfolios. I didn’t dig into any of the code but my guess is they used the same name for the Portfolio custom post type. When both were active the http://caveenasolutions.com/portfolio permalink would not work and none of our portfolio project pages would display.

The fix was simple enough:

1. Disable the Custom Post Type module in Jetpack’s settings.
2. Re-build the permalink structure.

If you happen to be using the Portfolio plugin along with the Custom Post Type module in Jetpack, I unfortunately have no answer for you.