Jetpack isn’t accepting my user name?! Why do I have so many?
If you’re new to WordPress, some hosting companies will preinstall the Jetpack plugin for you. Jetpack is an add-on (a “Plugin” in WordPress language) that adds a whole slew of extra features to your site, provided by WordPress.com — a fully-hosted version of WordPress (the software you installed with your hosting company).
Since Jetpack uses some of the resources of WordPress.com, it is required that you have a WordPress.com account to use all of the features.
Thus, you may have a slew of user names and password associated with your account. What are they all?
Your Hosting Provider
Your hosting provider, a company like Bluehost, Hostgator, WP Engine, Dreamhost or many, many others, will give you an account that you use to login to your control panel. Depending on the company, this is where you access error logs, the server’s file manager, e-mail settings, billing information and often more.
Self-hosted WordPress Install
WordPress sits on top of the server managed by your hosting company, but isn’t integrated into your hosting company’s control panel. Because of this, a separate user name and password is user to actually “log into your site”, create posts or pages, moderate comments, and more.
Jetpack and WordPress.com
When you first connect Jetpack to WordPress.com, you’re asked for another user name and password for WordPress.com. This isn’t the same as the one you use to log into your site. This one is specifically for WordPress.com.
Think of it as your site is your own WordPress island. WordPress.com is a huge, but completely separate, continent. The two don’t share lists of user names or passwords. Jetpack is, well, a jetpack that connects the two together to bring the features and resources of the huge continent to your island.
You’ll use your WordPress.com user name and password for a few different things:
- Initial setup of Jetpack
- Logging in to see the “enhanced” stats information for your site (hosted on WordPress.com)
- Setting up Gravatar — an online profile that also provides the avatars next to your name when you comment (on your site, any other WordPress site, and a number of other services).
- Your Akismet account. Akismet is the spam-blocking service that you can add-on to your site to keep spam comments out of your hair. It is another pre-installed plugin on your site, but to activate it, you’ll use your WordPress.com user name and password to set it up.
- VaultPress – a backup service by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, that you can purchase for your self-hosted WordPress site.
- And more!
Day-to-day, you’ll use your self-hosted WordPress user name and password the most, but keep your hosting company and WordPress.com credentials handy!
