Content Options in Jetpack 4.5

laptop and coffee

Last August, we introduced a new WordPress.com Customizer panel called Content Options, which gives users an easy way to make small visual modifications across their sites – no custom CSS needed.

Content Options supports four main features: Blog Display, Author Bio, Post Details, and Featured Images.

Content Options are now available to self-hosted WordPress sites with the latest version of Jetpack (4.5). Theme developers can add support for Content Options by following the Jetpack guide.

Let’s look at the main features of Content Options in more detail.

Blog Display

Users can choose between displaying the full content of each post or an excerpt on the blog and category, tag, and date archive pages, as well as search results.

Full post blog display option in Shoreditch
Full post blog display option in Shoreditch
Post excerpt blog display option in Shoreditch
Post excerpt blog display option in Shoreditch

Default Blog Display

If a theme displays either an excerpt or the full post depending on the post’s post format, theme developers can add a “Default” blog display option to let the theme keep its default blog display settings. For example, by default a theme might always displays posts with the Quote post format as the full post, so a quote is never truncated, while other post formats like Standard might be always displayed as an excerpt.

Default blog display option in Button
Default blog display option in Button

Author Bio

On the single post view, users can opt to display the name and bio of the post’s author. This information comes directly from the author’s profile at Users  Your Profile, and their Gravatar image.

Author Bio displayed on single post in Shoreditch
Author bio displayed on single post in Shoreditch

Post Details

The post details section allows users to show or hide the post date, categories, tags, or the post author’s name.

Post Details displayed in Penscratch
Post details displayed in Penscratch
Post Details hidden in Penscratch
Post details hidden in Penscratch

Users can choose whether to display featured images on single posts and pages. They can also opt whether to display featured images on blog and archive pages, which include category, tag, and date archives as well as search-results pages.

Featured Images displayed in Sela
Featured images displayed in Sela

WordPress.com users have loved the flexibility Content Options gives them. We’re very pleased that self-hosted sites can now benefit as well!

3 responses

  1. Where do I enable this?

    1. There is nothing to enable.

      If the theme you are using supports Content Options then you’ll see a new section in the Customizer called “Content Options”.

      1. I’d love if we could get the option to enable author names for posts on the blog home page regardless of theme. It seems the Content Options button for that doesn’t affect the home page though…