This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles designed to help you succeed online using the WordPress content publishing software.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn some impressive facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
The short version:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing 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 using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
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 content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 websites today are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change 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 figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher download figure … 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 over one hundred new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are typically named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of companies and people are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Popular brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WP Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Coca-Cola France, DC Diaper Bank, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains 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, 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).
You can see a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other posts, we will examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes …
(WordPress free themes directory)
For a detailed article about themes see this post:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress 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”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 37 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 Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WP 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information above, WordPress is bound for continued growth for a long time to come.
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 vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of step-by-step tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress to grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Information 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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group