Author: WP Compendium

This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online using the WordPress CMS platform.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• The Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

In this article, we present some surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.

WordPress: Usage And Popularity

A brief summary:

• WordPress began in 2003.
• WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows everyday.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are built with WordPress.
• WordPress sites around the world publish an average of 24 posts per second.
• WordPress sites receive over 22 billion monthly pageviews.
• WordPress blogs receive around 50 million comments per month.
• WordPress has been translated into over 70 languages.
• More than 60% of all sites that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
• Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
• The WordPress core application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve both its features and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all content on their site.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the most downloaded self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

WordPress is owned by Automattic.com, which currently employs around 300 people, all of whom are home-based. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Consider the following statistics on WordPress usage:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WP usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)

In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …

(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)

In fact, more sites are now being built on WordPress.

WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above download numbers represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest release …

(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software updates since 2003 …

(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)

Curiously enough, all major WordPress upgrades are named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
• v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

Who doesn’t use WordPress? All types of organizations and people are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Leading brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …

WordPress Blog Showcase

Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Boardshorts.com, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial purposes.
• More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
• In 2014, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).

You can see a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress.com – Activity Around The World

In other posts, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Other WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …

(WP plugin directory)

For more information about WordPress plugins go here:

• Using WP Plugins To Expand Your Blog’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free from the WordPress free theme repository …

(WP free themes repository)

For a detailed article about themes go here:

• Understanding WP Themes – A Handy Guide

WordPress Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …

(WordPress.org language translations)

Searching Online For WordPress

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …

(WP-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of WP users who participated in the survey stated that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.

You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …

According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

As you can clearly see from the above statistics, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
• Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate more traffic to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.

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Sources:

The information for this post was sourced from various locations around the web, including the following sites:

• https://wordpress.org
• https://wordpress.com
• http://automattic.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
• http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all
• http://trends.builtwith.com/cms
• http://ma.tt/2014/10/sotw-2014
• https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
• http://torquemag.io/13-surprising-wordpress-statistics
• https://websitebuilder.org/resources/amazing-facts-you-probably-dont-know-about-wordpress

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