This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part article series designed to help you understand how WordPress can help your business grow and succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 powered by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress software is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can do with 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 easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WP CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage figures. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version releases are named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Giant brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Google Ventures, Public Storage Canada, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The Australian, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, 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 software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains and customized 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog 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 (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In other articles, we will look at the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress free plugin repository …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress theme repository …
(WP themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WP languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the median 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 WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, WordPress is bound for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other articles, we will address the following areas in more detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new ”how to” tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum