This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow and succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Statistics And Popularity
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (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 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 that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress 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. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository 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 CMS Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners 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, it has grown to become the largest 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
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 and more websites and blogs today are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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, you will see a significantly higher number of downloads … 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 released over 100 new update versions since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version releases are named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress? All kinds of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Popular brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress to run their official sites …
WordPress Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Coca-Cola France, DC Diaper Bank, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., Time.com, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, 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 platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose 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 business marketing activities.
- 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 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In later tutorials, we address the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
We have written a comprehensive article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about WP themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WordPress users who participated in 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, WordPress is set for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following areas:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide lots of step-by-step tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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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://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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