Tag: Growth Of WordPress

This article is part of an article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow online with WordPress.

For an overview of the article series, go here:

• Learn How To Grow Your Business Using WordPress

In this article, you will learn a number of WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.

Statistics And Market Share About WordPress

A brief summary:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
• 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 around the world are built with 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 content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
• The WordPress application is regularly updated to address bugs and improve its ease of use 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what can be built with WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website 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 all content on their site.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of websites 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …

(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)

Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress:

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

(WordPress CMS 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 websites are now being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so frequently.

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 download figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …

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

Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer 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 released over 100 new software updates since 2003 …

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

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

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

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are typically named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
• v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All types of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Large corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress-powered sites …

WordPress.org Showcase

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

• Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, DC Diaper Bank, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains 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, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).

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

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World

In later posts, we discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WP plugins …

(WP plugin repository)

We have written a great article about WP plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins Enhance Your Site’s Functionality

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes at no cost …

(WordPress themes repository)

For more information about WP themes see this post:

• Understanding WordPress Themes – A Non-Technical User’s Guide

Translations Of WordPress

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

(WordPress.org language translations)

WordPress Searches

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 37 million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

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

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all users who answered the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

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

In other articles, we will address the following areas in detail:

• Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your business online,
• Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted visitors to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many ”how to” tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.

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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://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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