This article is part of an article series designed to help you succeed online.
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In this blog post, we present some impressive WordPress 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.
Facts And Figures About WordPress
The brief version:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly everyday.
- 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 CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted CMS application 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 being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage statistics:
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 usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites are using the WordPress CMS platform.
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 number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download number represents only the most recent 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 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 should expect to see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a different 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 update versions since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress updates are named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All different kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Global corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, universities, government department sites, humanitarian organizations – even nations are using WordPress …
WP Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, Glad, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, New York Post, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, 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 to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some kind of business.
- 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In later tutorials, we will compare the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin repository …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have written a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, 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 is searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WP 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 …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the statistics presented above, the growth of WordPress is expected to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty 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 CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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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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