This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners grow online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of statistics 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 Figures
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
- 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 worldwide using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the most downloaded self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of websites 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WP usage statistics:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites today are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so often.
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 figure represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded 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 shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress 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 100 new updates to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are typically named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Large brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Public Storage Canada, Groupe Renault, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, The Australian, IMC TV, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and customized 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later posts, we will examine the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WordPress themes for free from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress themes repository)
For a detailed article about WP themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP languages)
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”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 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 33,000 WordPress 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for a long time to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new ”how to” tutorials and great examples and tips on how to use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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References:
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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