Tag: WordPress Usage

This article is part of a series of articles designed to help small businesses grow online with the WordPress CMS.

For more information about of the article series, go here:

• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business

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 are using WordPress today.

Statistics About WordPress Usage

In short:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress offers 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 site.
• 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 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 sites that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
• Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
• 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 continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
• WordPress is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what you can do using WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …

(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Consider the following stats on WordPress:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WordPress CMS 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 and more sites today are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so often.

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

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

Note: The above numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …

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

As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a significantly higher 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 made available to users over 100 new software versions to date …

(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released since 2003)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress upgrades are traditionally named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
• v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress?

In a nutshell, all types of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.

Popular brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …

WordPress.org Website Showcase

Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Public Storage Canada, Panic, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
• Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

WordPress provides a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide

In other tutorials, we will discuss the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WP plugins …

(WP free plugins repository)

For more information about WP plugins see this post:

• Using WP Plugins To Expand Your Website’s Capabilities

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress free theme repository …

(WP free themes repository)

For a detailed article about themes see this post:

• A Useful Guide To WP Themes

WordPress In Other Languages

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

(WP languages)

WordPress Searches Online

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …

(WP searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 users who responded to 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 around US$50.

You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …

According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

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 arena.

In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress in great detail:

• Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your small business online,
• Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive more traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting new ”how to” tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.

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References:

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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