Author: WP Compendium

This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help small business owners grow and succeed online with the WordPress CMS platform.

For more information about of the article series, go here:

• Using A WordPress Site To Grow A Successful Small Business

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

WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics

Below is a summary of what we will cover:

• WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (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 or blog.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 sites worldwide that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
• WordPress is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its usage and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is almost no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.

WordPress Market Share

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 users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the widely-used 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …

(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)

Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress:

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

(WordPress CMS usage stats. 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 and more websites are using the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.

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

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

Note: The above download figure represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …

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

Even as this article 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 figure … perhaps even a newer 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 over one hundred new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)

WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …

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

Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
• 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.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All kinds of companies and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.

Large corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even nations use WordPress …

WordPress.org Showcase

Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, organizations and people who use WordPress:

• Businesses & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
• Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

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

• Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business activities.
• 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

WordPress.com provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide

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

Other WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugin directory …

(WordPress.org plugin repository)

We have written a great article about WordPress plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Expand Your Website’s Capabilities

WordPress Themes

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

(WordPress.org free themes repository)

We have written a detailed article about themes here:

• A Beginner’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

WordPress Language Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …

(WordPress.org language translations)

Searching Online For WordPress

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …

(WordPress searches online)

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

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress users who responded to the survey said that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. 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 …

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

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see from the above facts and figures, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.

In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas of WordPress in great detail:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your small business online,
• Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.

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Sources:

The above figures were 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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