After the Deadline

In our last post, we let you know that we’d no longer be supporting After the Deadline browser extensions — you can still use AtD, just within WordPress itself rather than through a browser.  If your site is on WordPress.com, you’re all set; you’ve got a “proofread” button right in your post and page editors.

But what if you’re prone to typos and running a self-hosted WordPress blog? Easy: Jetpack.

Jetpack is the Swiss army knife of plugins: it’s a multipurpose plugin that gives your self-hosted WordPress site two dozen of the most popular features of WordPress.com. By hooking your site into the WordPress.com cloud, it lets you have the best of both worlds: WordPress.com power and ease with WordPress.org flexibility.

Why are we going on about Jetpack on the After the Deadline blog? Simple: installing Jetpack gives you AtD, right there in your post editor, so you can check your work no matter where you’re publishing. And if that isn’t enough, consider some of the other features it includes:

• Tiled photo galleries, so you can create elegant, magazine-style mosaic layouts with a few clicks.
• Shortcode embeds to speed up the process of inserting multimedia.
• Comments that let readers respond to you using their WordPress.com, Facebook, or Twitter login.
• Notifications and stats to help you manage everything from one simple toolbar.
• Sharing tools to take your content from stand-alone post to viral sensation.

That’s just the tip of the jetpack – check out Jetpack.me for a full features list. Best of all, this can all be yours for the low, low price of zero dollars, and with only one plugin to install.

Remember, if you still want to pitch in with the development and maintenance of browser-specific After the Deadline extensions, the main AtD site has tons of developer resources. But if you just want to make sure you never publish another “teh” (at least, accidentally), then Jetpack’s your plugin.