This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners and non-technical users succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Facts And Figures About WordPress
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- 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 one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built with WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
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 easy for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress usage:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more sites today are being built with the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(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 download number … perhaps even a different 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 versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are traditionally named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of organizations and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Global corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, Glad, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, 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 prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names 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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Live Activity
In later articles, we will examine the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have published a great article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes for free …
(WordPress.org theme repository)
For more information about themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS market.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website 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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