Tag: Growth Of WordPress

This article is part of a comprehensive multi-part article series designed to help you grow a successful business online.

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

• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow A Successful Small Business

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

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

The short version:

• 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).
• 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
• 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 worldwide 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 using a content management system are built with WordPress.
• Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
• WordPress is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.

WordPress Market Share

A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their website.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

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

Consider the following figures on WordPress usage:

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

(WordPress CMS 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 sites today are using WordPress.

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

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

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

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

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

As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software updates in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)

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

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

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades are named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

In a nutshell, all different kinds of companies and people use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.

Giant brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even countries are using WordPress …

WordPress Showcase

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

• Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Snoop Dogg, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Time Inc., New York Post, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (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 own 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, blogs belonging to 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 posts per day).

You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity

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

Additional WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

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

(WordPress.org plugin directory)

We have published a detailed article about plugins here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Site With WordPress Plugins

WordPress Themes

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

(WordPress.org free themes repository)

We have written a comprehensive article about WordPress themes here:

• About WordPress Themes – A Practical Guide For Business Owners

Using WordPress In Different Languages

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

(WordPress.org language translations)

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”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …

(WP searches online)

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

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WordPress users who responded to the survey stated 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, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

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

In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress:

• Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your business online,
• Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be providing loads of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.

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Information Sources:

The information for this article 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://wptrainme.com
• 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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