This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help small business owners grow online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Popularity
The quick version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases everyday.
- 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 sites using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress core functionality is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to become the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites and seen 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 views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. 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 are now powered by WordPress.
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 article was written, 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 recent 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 post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress development 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 updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even countries use WordPress …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Google Ventures, Boardshorts.com, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Dave Matthews Band, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other articles, we will examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
We have written a detailed article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WordPress.org theme repository)
For more information about WP themes see this post:
WordPress In Other Languages
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 searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, the growth and popularity of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option in most situations when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your site, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new step-by-step tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
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References:
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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