WordPress is already on the CMS Hall of Fame. It proved itself as a system that individual bloggers, small businesses, and large businesses love unconditionally — no one saw it coming then, everyone loves it now. WordPress is ubiquitous, almost. Here’s some wordpress facts, short introduction, history, some information about the use and popularity of WordPress, and finally, a few challenges it might face:
WordPress History
Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg started tinkering with some fancy code in the year 2003, and released WordPress V 0.7 in an effort to create a content management system or a blogging platform that’s easy enough for average Internet users to start publishing by themselves. Little did they know that they triggered a ballistic growth in self-publishing with that little piece of code then.
By December, the same year, WordPress Wiki was launched (when is now WordPress Codex). By 2004, users see potential and rush to use WordPress while moving away from “Movable Type” and “Six Apart”. Later, in 2004, WordPress version 1.2 rolled out with plugin support.
Then came various versions of WordPress, each building on top of the other, everything rolling together in perfect harmony to create a Content Management System you can’t help but love.
WordPress facts: The Ever Resplendent Popularity of WordPress
Here are some surprising WordPress facts:
Matt Mullenweg – the founding developer of WordPress, one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc’s 30 under 30, BusinessWeek’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web – reflects on how WordPress now completely dominates World’s Top 100 blogs and enjoys a market share of 49%.
That’s an increase from just over 32% of market share recorded in 2009. He further expects even more publishing houses, companies, large websites, and blogs to adopt WordPress to power their online presence.
According to an Info graphic from Yoast.com, WordPress currently powers 72.4 Million different websites around the world making it the world’s most widely used CMS in existence.
Another important WordPress fact is that since its inception, it has seen 98 version releases and now makes up for at least 48% of Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs.
WordPress V3.3 was released on December 13th, 2011. By the turn of the year, it saw 12 million downloads on self-hosted platforms. The staggering WordPress facts don’t end here, of course. In an astounding parallel universe, there are over 19,000+ plugins available for free while these plugins were downloaded more 285,000,000 times so far, and the number is still counting as we write this post.
Where is WordPress Going From Here?
Stupendous growth, that’s what is coming up. WordPress is not god’s work though, and it has its share of problems. The WordPress team will focus on the core development continuously. Over the next few years, as Matt Mullenweg shares on his blog post, the challenges will be to develop the WordPress Dashboard to make it faster, leaner, and more accessible (especially with the new need to make WordPress work on Mobile Devices).
WordPress will have its hands full with respect to security. Apart from that, the tens of thousands of plugins, countless number of free and paid themes, and the undying support of the WordPress Community will be a package that’s hard to beat. As Matt says in his post,
“We might not always be the platform people start with, but we to be the best platform to graduate to”
For more WordPress facts and WordPress development information and studies, click here
