Category: WordPress Overview

This article is part of an article series designed to help you understand why the WordPress platform can help your business achieve its online goals.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow A Successful Small Business Online

In this article, you will learn some surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.

Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage

A brief summary:

• WordPress started in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (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.
• There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly 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 sites worldwide that use a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
• Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
• WordPress is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both 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 plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what you can build 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 easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all content on their site.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now 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 monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …

(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:

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 powered by WordPress.

WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes so often.

For example, at the time this article was published, here is the 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 version …

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

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

Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new update versions to date …

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

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

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

Curiously enough, all major WordPress updates are traditionally named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
• v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
• v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress?

In a nutshell, all different kinds of enterprises and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.

Leading corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …

WordPress.org Blog Showcase

Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people using WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Bata, Boardshorts.com, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
• Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (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 domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for marketing or promoting businesses.
• 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

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

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World

In later tutorials, we present the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Other Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugin repository …

(WordPress free plugins directory)

For a detailed article about plugins see this post:

• Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Expand Your Blog’s Functionality

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes for free …

(WordPress free themes directory)

We have published a detailed article about WordPress themes here:

• A Basic Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

WordPress Translations

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

(WordPress languages)

Searching Online For WordPress

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

(WP-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 users who answered 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.

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

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

(Source: Upwork.com)

As you can see from the above statistics, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.

In other blog posts, we will explore the following:

• Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your business online,
• Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate more visitors to your website, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many ”how to” tutorials and actual examples on how to use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web 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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