Category: WordPress Overview

This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses succeed online using the WordPress CMS platform.

For more information about of the article series, see this post:

• How To Grow Your Small Business With A WordPress Blog

In this blog post, you will learn 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 business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.

WordPress: How Popular Is It? Facts And Figures About WordPress

The quick version:

• WordPress began in 2003.
• WordPress is available as 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 a new WordPress website.
• There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are powered 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 that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
• Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application 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. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress core software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is almost no limit to what you can build with WordPress.

WordPress Market Share

A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify 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. It is currently the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …

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

Here are just some of the latest WP usage figures:

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

(WP usage figures. 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 being powered by the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this post 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 most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …

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

Even as this article 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, expect to 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.

Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new update versions to date …

(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released to date)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress updates are named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
• v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
• v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress?

A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.

Well-known corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …

WordPress.org Web Site Showcase

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

• Businesses & Corporations: Bata, YRC Freight, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Pixies, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain 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 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

You can see a live map that shows user activity across its hosted service …

WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide

In other posts, we examine the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

General WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free …

(WordPress plugin repository)

For a detailed article about WordPress plugins see this post:

• Add New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free themes …

(WordPress.org theme repository)

We have written a comprehensive article about WordPress themes here:

• Understanding WP Themes – A Handy Guide

WordPress Language Translations

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

(WordPress.org languages)

WordPress Searches

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …

(WP-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of users who participated in the survey stated 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 …

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

(Source: Upwork.com)

As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
• Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive more traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll provide new ”how to” tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.

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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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