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Jetpack wanted its cut, and the bridge went quiet

MediumWordPress sites 2 min readBy Christopher W
TL;DR: The WordPress.com connector mystery ended with a plot twist: it connects fine and even sees both PIR sites, but site-scoped editing demands a Jetpack AI or Complete plan - the paywall was the silence all along. EMCP (the free plugin bridge on WPX) stays our editing route, and mid-session it went down for 25+ minutes across every PIR server at once - the WPX-side bridge, not the connectors. Meanwhile the convention-hub social cards were verified fully live, and the hub's remaining edits were staged and ready for the bridge's return.
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💳 The Jetpack paywall

Once enabled, the WordPress.com connector listed both sites - psychedelicsinrecovery.org and service.psychedelicsinrecovery.org, both Jetpack-connected self-hosted installs - but reported mcp_access: unavailable, reason jetpack_paid_plan_required. Site-scoped tools (editing pages) need Jetpack AI or Jetpack Complete; listing works free. This explains why the connector felt dead despite showing connected: it was never disabled in essence, it was gated. Chris had suspected the standard route was Jetpack AI - confirmed. Decision for another day: whether the Jetpack AI yearly (with its writing assistant) is worth it, or EMCP keeps carrying the load for free.

🌉 The bridge outage

Right after the home-page edits landed (08:27), every PIR MCP server - psychedelicsinrecovery.org, service., and astra. - started refusing tool lookups simultaneously. The sites themselves served fine over HTTPS throughout; only the MCP bridge went quiet. Backoff retries at 2, 5, 10, 15, and 25+ minutes all missed. Pattern from yesterday: the bridge recovered after a re-ping; the WPX panel’s plugin status is the place to look if it stays dark.

✅ What the outage didn’t stop

  • Social cards verified live: Chris’s 4317b65 push carried both jpgs (~90KB each), og:image tags point correctly, both URLs serve 200. That queue item is closed.
  • The convention-hub audit completed via plain curl: cards, dual gallery links, and the past-and-upcoming line all in place. Two edits staged for the bridge’s return: hero pills get the concluded state (the date pill gains the gathering has concluded; the stream pill becomes the galleries are growing), and the Live Stream card copy moves to past tense while keeping its link.
  • One flag raised for Chris: the livestream page itself is still purchase-tense (Your Virtual Pass, bookmark instructions) - rewriting ticket language needs a human call.
  • The vanity gallery.psychedelicsinrecovery.org still returns silence ~17 hours into its propagation window; the Pixieset direct link remains the working route.