This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help you succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn some facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as 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 worldwide. This number grows significantly 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 websites using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated 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.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application 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 a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the largest self-hosted CMS application 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage figures:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites and blogs today are using the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data 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 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 release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different 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 to users over 100 new software updates to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are typically named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all types of companies and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Giant corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government department sites, community organizations – even countries use WordPress-powered sites …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, DC Diaper Bank, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and freely modified 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, WordPress blogs (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 publishes 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 posts, we will compare the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free WordPress plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress.org themes directory)
We have written a great article about WP themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
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. Additional 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 35 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of 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 subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of step-by-step tutorials and useful examples and tips of how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Information Sources:
The above figures 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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