Recently I posted a note to a WordPress group on Facebook about BruteProtect no longer issuing new API keys, and naturally Automattic’s Jetpack plugin was mentioned since that is where you have to go for BruteProtect functionality nowadays. Since the internet never disappoints, Jetpack detractors there were there almost immediately chiming in with the usual comments about how “bloated” the plugin is (I don’t personally agree); how awful Jetpack is because it starts with numerous modules activated out of the gate (I don’t see this as a big problem, as they are easily enabled/disabled and it is something you only have to worry about once per site installation); and how much of a pain it is to manage Jetpack installations for clients due to its requirement for connection to a wordpress.com account.
This last complaint caught my attention, because it reminded me of a discussion we’d had a few months ago at the agency where I work. We were discussing a rollout plan for giving Jetpack to many of our existing clients, but we knew that we would need to connect each site to wordpress.com in order to do so. For ease of use we wanted to use a single email alias such as `[email protected]`, but this was immediately ruled out. When you have multiple independent clients, you can’t connect everyone with the same email address because don’t want each one having access to each others data (especially stats and plugin management!). We needed a different approach.
Our final solution ended up taking about 5 minutes to configure, and allowed us to go through the Jetpack installations with ease. New clients who receive Jetpack are quickly connected with no additional setup required.