Enhancement: Please bring back UI settings for PORTFOLIO & TESTIMONIALS

[jhmonroe]

Impacted plugin

Jetpack

What

Please bring back UI settings for PORTFOLIO & TESTIMONIALS

How

According to the note on your docs here, it was removed from 14.4. Can someone explain why? Is there some long-term plan?

"Starting with Jetpack 14.4, if you’re using a block theme (such Twenty Twenty-Four), you may notice that Testimonials and Portfolios no longer appear in your WP Admin, even if Jetpack is active. This is expected behavior."
Source: https://jetpack.com/support/custom-content-types/

To bring it back automatically, someone needs to already have 1 portfolio item (which doesn't help with new builds).
OR they need to add a filter to functions... which defeats the whole purpose of using a plugin with a UI... plugins with UI's are for people who don't want to do a bunch of coding all the time! ;-)

Portfolio, Testimonials, the nice Slideshow, etc are the main reasons I use Jetpack (.org install) on all my artist/portfolio sites.

Maybe some more context as to why it was removed would be enlightening? Is there some other plan for Block sites I am unaware of?

[coder-karen]

Thanks for reaching out!

The idea is that on block themes, portfolios and testimonials don't make as much sense because they can now be added as patterns (with a process such as that described here).

However we didn't want to completely remove the ability to use the existing portfolio / testimonials feature for anyone who was already very familiar with it, hence the filter option for anyone who would prefer to keep using this.

That said, our docs don't mention this, so I'll pass on a request to include that as well.

[jhmonroe]

@coder-karen thanks for your reply! i figured it had something to do with a transition into FSE and appreciate the additional context.

that said, I do think there's still more power/ease-of-use in the CPTs Jetpack integrates into the UI. also that target audience of plugins is non-coders—jetpack's focus on a beautiful-out-of-the-box photographer-oriented lightbox also suggest this. jetpack made a powerful/turnkey solution for creatives' portfolio sites. patterns aren't quite as simple or powerful (yet)—patterns are still relegated to the realm of laying out pages manually.

the jetpack approach is more in-line with composable content/headless models where it's more extensible. the superpower of wordpress is CPTs (and the jetpack CPTs can be created once and used all over your site—more below). patterns seem more limited to laying out individual pages in FSE.

here's my use case of why your current/old setup is still superior:

on my homepage i cycle thru a query loop that pulls in jetpack testimonials CPTs into gutenslider (free!): https://monroeand.co/

i'm not sure how this could have been done in such a composable/powered way using patterns. the query loop can't cycle thru patterns or a series of content overrides of synced patterns. until then, patterns aren't really a solution worth throwing away CPTs for. if someone knows otherwise a way this can be natively done in FSE, change my mind! :-)

PS: i was originally clued into the jetpack CPT approach because of the beautiful themes @ellenbauer @elmastudio made which used jetpack/lightbox/portfolio/testimonials. she is a genius and may have useful opinion on this as well

PPS: if jetpack has a long-term strategy where you're moving legacy creative features out in favor of a different base suite (focused on security, backup, speed, growth in the tagline currently), perhaps moving portfolio/testimonials/slideshow/color settings (and other creative-oriented modules) into a "jetpack designer" plugin addon the way you've done with protect, boost, vault, etc would be a useful compartmentalization.

something to consider!

[coder-karen]

Appreciate hearing your use case here, and I'll make sure we consider this for any next steps with the CPT features as well.
As for how patterns or FSE could achieve the same as what you are looking for, as you said it looks like pure patterns alone don’t replace CPTs because Query Loop can’t iterate patterns.

I'm not sure if there is any reasonable workaround or solution in the works at this stage yet, but that limitation should be something we factor in.