Just before publishing a post last week, I noticed that the “Get Shortlink” shortcut was missing from my WordPress editor. As I was in a rush, I went ahead with publishing and the full-length URL went out with the tweet.

Get Shortlink Missing

As that was not something I had done and is functionality that I use all the time, I wanted it back.

Finding the answer wasn’t easy. People had seen this behaviour before but as a solution, some talked about installing plugins while others talked about editing PHP files.  In the end, it wasn’t that drastic so I thought I should do a quick note on that.

There might be other reasons for it but I do remember temporarily disabling/enabling Jetpack a few days prior to that, due to a performance issue I was investigating for my blog (another post in the making). Doing so, also removed my settings so I restored whatever I could remember but I suspect that’s also what triggered the disappearance of “Get Shortlink”.

Restoring it was simple, actually! One needs to:

  1. Go to “JetPack”
  2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Debug”
  3. On the resulting “Jetpack Debugging Center” page, click on “Access the full list of Jetpack modules available on your site”
  4. A list appears. Scroll down to “WP.me Shortlinks”. If you hover above it, “Activate” should appear. Click it.
  5. That’s it! The “Get Shortlink” button should reappear in the WordPress editor.

Hope this helps!