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In this article, you will learn some WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Surprising Facts And Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool 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 one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- 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 CMS Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit 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 downloaded self-hosted CMS application 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 so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique monthly visits. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP CMS usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 sites today are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so often.
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 number 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 currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article 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 no doubt see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated 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 over one hundred new update versions since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version releases are traditionally named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different kinds of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, Glad, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, 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 to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts 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 other tutorials, we will cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugin directory …
(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 theme repository …
(WordPress themes repository)
We have published a great article about themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches 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 around 37 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of users who responded to the survey stated 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, 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 platform to grow your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your website, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
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Information Sources:
The information for this post 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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