Category: WordPress Overview

This article is part of an article series aimed at helping you succeed online.

For an overview of the article series, go here:

• Learn How To Grow Your Business Using A WordPress Site

In this blog post, you will learn some facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.

Statistics And Market Share About WordPress

In short:

• 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 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
• There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. 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 websites worldwide using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
• WordPress is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what type of site you can build with 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 website owners to add, edit and manage content on their site.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of sites and accessed 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Consider the following stats on WordPress:

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

(WordPress 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 sites are now powered by the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.

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

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

Note: The above numbers represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …

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

Even 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 page, you will no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software versions to date …

(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)

WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …

(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades 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.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
• v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress?

A better question is who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All types of businesses and people are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.

Large brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even nations use WordPress blogs …

WP Blog Showcase

Here are just some of the businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:

• Businesses & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Mötley Crüe, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Bates College, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., New York Post, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial applications.
• 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

WordPress.com provides a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity

In other articles, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins at no cost …

(WordPress.org plugin repository)

For more information about WP plugins see this post:

• Using WP Plugins To Expand Your Blog’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes at no cost …

(WP themes directory)

We have written a great article about themes here:

• Understanding WordPress Themes – A Guide For New WP Users

Translations Of WordPress

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

(WordPress.org languages)

WordPress Searches Online

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

(WordPress-related searches online)

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

WordPress Developers

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

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

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

(Source: Upwork.com)

As you can clearly see from the above facts and figures, the growth of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your small business online,
• Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate targeted visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be providing many step-by-step tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress to grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web 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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