Tag: WordPress Stats

This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses succeed online with the WordPress CMS platform.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• An Online Guide To Growing Your Successful Business With A WordPress Blog

In this blog post, you will learn a number of surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.

Facts And Figures About WordPress

In short:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (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 well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are powered 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 using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
• Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
• WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
• WordPress is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
• The WordPress core software is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.

WordPress Usage

A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical users 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, it has grown to be the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of websites 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

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 …

(WP usage stats. 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 websites today are using the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so often.

For example, at the time this post was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above download figures represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …

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

Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new update versions to date …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released to date)

WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …

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

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress?

Who doesn’t use WordPress? All different kinds of enterprises and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.

Large brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …

WordPress.org Showcase

Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people who have chosen to use WordPress:

• Global Brands & Corporations: Google Ventures, Boardshorts.com, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business activities.
• 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

WordPress provides a live map showing user activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Worldwide

In later articles, we cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins …

(WordPress.org plugin directory)

For a detailed article about WordPress plugins see this post:

• Using WP Plugins To Enhance Your Blog’s Features And Functionality

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes …

(WordPress themes repository)

For more information about WP themes see this post:

• Understanding WP Themes – A Practical Guide For Beginners

Using WordPress In Other Languages

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

(WP 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”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.

WordPress Rates

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WordPress users who participated in the survey said 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 by searching on 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 from the statistics presented above, WordPress is poised for continued growth for many years to come.

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best vehicle for growing your business online,
• Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll provide many tutorials and practical examples on how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.

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Sources:

The above statistics were 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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