This blog post is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you understand how the WordPress CMS can help your business succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Some Facts And Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty 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 built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate 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 languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress Usage
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, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the most downloaded self-hosted CMS application 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage statistics. 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 today are being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this article was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly higher 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.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version releases have a tradition of being named after Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of companies and people use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Giant corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Sony Music, Glad, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers 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 on their domains and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some kind of commercial purpose.
- 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 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In other tutorials, we discuss the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WordPress plugins …
(WordPress plugin directory)
We have written a detailed article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes …
(WordPress.org themes directory)
For a detailed article about WP themes go here:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online 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 than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress users who answered 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures above, the growth and popularity of WordPress is predicted to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most cases when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your website, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing ”how to” tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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Sources:
The above statistics 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now