Author: WP Compendium

This blog post is part of a series of articles aimed at helping you understand why the WordPress platform can help your business achieve its online goals.

For an overview of the article series, go here:

• Using A WordPress Site To Grow Your Business

In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.

WordPress Statistics

A brief summary:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
• There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number is growing every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are driven by 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 websites that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
• Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
• The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.

WordPress Usage

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

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of sites and accessed 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …

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

Consider the following figures on WordPress CMS usage:

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

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

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

(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)

In fact, more and more sites are being built with WordPress.

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

For example, at the time this post was written, 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 recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …

(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over one hundred new software versions to date …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released in its first 11 years)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
• v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress?

A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All types of organizations and people are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.

Popular brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, humanitarian organizations – even countries use WordPress blogs …

WordPress.org Blog Showcase

Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people using WordPress:

• Global Brands & Corporations: Bata, YRC Freight, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Kobe Bryant, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, FiveThirtyEight, CBS New York, etc.
• Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

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

• Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
• More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
• In 2014, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

WordPress provides a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide

In other articles, we examine the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free from the WordPress plugin directory …

(WP plugin directory)

We have written a great article about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins To Extend Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress theme repository …

(WordPress.org theme repository)

For more information about themes go here:

• A Useful Guide To WordPress Themes

Using WordPress In Different Languages

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

(WordPress 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”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 37 million …

(WP searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.

WordPress Rates

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 users who participated in the survey said that they make a full-time living off WordPress. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the median hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.

You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …

According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

As you can see from the information presented above, WordPress is poised for continued growth for a long time to come.

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
• Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate more visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing ”how to” tutorials and useful examples and tips of how to use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.

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Information Sources:

The information for this article 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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