Jetpack is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress. It offers multiple modules that you can enable or disable as per your need. Recently, we have installed Jetpack plugin and wanted to add “Top Posts and Pages” widgets. However, this widget was not available and here is how to activate additional widgets with Jetpack.
Jetpack Default Widgets
After installing the plugin, Jetpack will add few widgets that you can add in sidebar and footer area of your site. If you are using the latest block based widget editor, you can insert Jetpack widgets anywhere on your site using Gutenberg editor. The default widgets include blog subscription, contact form and social integration.
However, useful widgets like top posts is missing in the default list.
Add Missing Jetpack Widgets
After checking, we found that Jetpack offers different types of widgets.
- Default widgets as explained above.
- Extra widgets that include top posts and pages widget.
- Related posts module.
Extra widgets is a separate module in Jetpack plugin that you need to activate. Go to “Jetpack > Settings” menu and navigate to “Writing” section.
Scroll down and enable “Make extra widgets available for use on your site including subscription forms and Twitter streams” option under “Widgets” section.
If required, you can also enable the widget visibility control option. You will see a success message saying “Updated Settings” confirming your changes are saved.
Check in Widgets Area
Now, go to “Appearance > Area” section and check whether you can see additional widgets. You should see dozens of additional Jetpack widgets like top posts and pages, social icons, Twitter Timeline, etc.
As mentioned, you can add all these widgets in your post content using Gutenberg block editor.
List of Extra Widgets in Jetpack
Here is a complete list of extra widgets that you can get with Jetpack widgets module.
- Instagram Widget
- Social Icons Widget
- Flickr Widget
- MailChimp Subscriber Popup Widget
- Cookies & Consent Banner
- Upcoming Events Widget
- Milestone Widget
- Blog Stats Widget
- Authors Widget
- Google Translate Widget
- My Community Widget
- Goodreads Widget
- Contact Info Widget
- Top Posts & Pages Widget
- Google+ Badge Widget
- Gravatar Profile Widget
- Gallery Widget (deprecated)
- Display WordPress Posts Widget
- Facebook Page Plugin Widget
- Image Widget
Privacy Concern When Using Extra Widgets
First, using Jetpack plugin needs you to have and connect to WordPress.com account. In addition, the developer Automattic will collect some additional data when using these extra widgets. You can check out the details on Jetpack website and that’s the reason the extra widget module is deactivated by default. You virtually accept the terms by manually enabling these widgets. May not be the best practice, however that’s how it works with Jetpack.
Related Posts Widget
Jetpack also offers a related posts widget that you can add below the post content. This is a useful widget instead of using resource heavy plugin to add related posts in your site.
- Go to “Jetpack > Settings” menu and navigate to “Traffic” section.
- Enable “Show Related Content After Posts” under “Related Posts” section.
- You have an option to highlight the heading and enable or disable thumbnails.
- You can also click on the “Configure related posts in the Customizer” link to preview the related posts in customizer section. When you are in customizer “Related Posts” section, view any single posts to preview the related posts widget.
- You can toggle headline, thumbnail, date and context (category or tag) from the available settings. It is also possible to change the display from grid to list view if that matches your site’s layout.
Note: If additional widgets are not visible after enabling extra widgets module, probably you need to uninstall and reinstall Jetpack plugin.