Interesting Facts to Know About WordPress
WordPress continues to be one of the most preferred content management systems in the world. This can be attributed to the fact that it is free to use, has a large support community and an intuitive platform to work on. Whether you are interested in building a simple blog or a sophisticated web shop, WordPress has you covered. In this post, we will be taking a look at a few important facts about WordPress.
It is older than Twitter and Facebook
WordPress was first released on 27th May, 2003. This makes the platform older than both Twitter and Facebook. The ideal behind creating this platform was to provide a personal publishing platform that focused on aesthetics, web standards as well as usability. Since the release of the first version in 2003, WordPress has lived up to its promise. It is today one of the most used CMS.
Who suggested the name?
The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck Tremoulet. She is a prolific blogger and a close friend of the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg.
WordPress powers more websites than all other CMSs
According to a survey by W3Techs, WordPress was found to be the most popular content management system in the world. It powers a whooping 27.9% of all the websites. It is followed by Joomla with 3.3% then Drupal at 2.2%, then Magento at 1.2%, Blogger at 1.1% and the others follow. According to the Wappalyzer, WordPress dominates the CMS market share. This is thanks to its 76.4% market share.
It is open source
You may already know this but it is worth mentioning again. WordPress is open source. It is released under the GNU GPL license. What this means is that anyone in the world can download and use WordPress. The source code is available for free to anyone who wants to use, study, modify or build upon it. It is free to use WordPress.
As a matter of fact, in an effort to protect the freedoms of open sources, the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg created the WordPress Foundation which is a non-profit organization that owns the WordPress trademark. The organization is what protects the freedoms that come with the software’s open source license. It is good to note that WordPress doesn’t have a CEO. The entire project is run by volunteer developers from across the globe.
There are over 1.48 billion plugin downloads
In 2016, WordPress crossed the 1.48 billion total plugin downloads. That was an increase of 48% from 2015 when downloads surpassed the 1 billion mark.
It is a multibillion dollar economy
Hundreds of companies as well as thousands of professionals sell WordPress based products, solutions and services. The platform offers great opportunities for designers, developers and entrepreneurs to build their business. It is also good to note that WordPress is used by thousands of government websites, universities, colleges and schools across the globe.
There are many more facts about WordPress including the fact that it is available in more than 68 languages. Needless to say, WordPress is a CMS designed to change the way people build websites.