WordPress Turns 20 in 2023

Yayyy…!

Our favorite CMS, WordPress, is turning 20 this year. Starting as blogging software, this powerful website builder has continuously evolved through constant innovation and progress.

This post is to cherish the two decades of achievements & success of WordPress, the lifeblood of millions of websites.

Toasts to Matt & Mike – Founders of WordPress

WordPress is the outcome of the vision & hard work of idealists — Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, who visioned making website building more accessible.

WordPress’s Achievements to Cherish

Being a WordPress development company, we pride ourselves in celebrating the platform’s accomplishments. It’s the moment to cherish for everyone in the WordPress community — bloggers, developers, businesses, freelancers, and agencies.

The Most-Loved CMS

WordPress is used by 43.1% of websites on the internet. That means 4 out of 10 websites are powered by WordPress!

Leading the E-Commerce Market

WooCommerce, a plugin that enables eCommerce in WordPress is the most popular shopping cart solution used by 36.68% of online stores.

Create AR Experiences

Deliver lively experiences to the users and customers using Augmented Reality plugins available for WordPress.

Bloggers Love WordPress

WordPress is a perfect choice for anyone looking to create a blog, personal or professional. It is used by 80% of blog sites.

Trusted by the Brands People Trust

Millions of brands entrust their online content management and website to WordPress. Some of the famous names include:

• Time Magazine
• IBM
• Kaspersky
• Bloomberg
• Salesforce
• Snapchat
• Stripe
• Dell
• HealthLine
• TechCrunch

60k+ Free Plugins Extending Features

The official WordPress plugin store boasts over 60,000 free plugins that enrich the experience.

WordPress Turning 20: Celebration Plans

WordPress is celebrating 20 years of massive success in 2023.

Various events are being held from the start of the year till the anniversary date (May 27, 2023, reflecting back on the achievements, and looking forward to the future. You can follow the official handles of the platform on social media or the official anniversary site for more updates.

Got a celebration idea? Submit it through this form to include it on the official celebration site.

Community members can use the #WP20 hashtag on social media to follow along with the celebration.

History of WordPress

Matt Mullenweg partnered with Mike Little to develop WordPress, a successor of a blogging software called ‘b2/cafelog’, and released the initial version on May 27, 2003, which was based on PHP & SQL. The founders had a clear vision — to make building websites easier for everyone.

Interestingly, the term ‘WordPress’ was suggested by Christine Selleck Termoulet, Matt’s friend, who was an impressive blogger at that time.

Since the initial release of WordPress, it has remained an open-source platform powered by a vast community of developers, engineers, and agencies, contributing to it around the world.

Major Breakthroughs in the History of WordPress

• May 27, 2003: First release of WordPress version 0.7 available for download.
• Dec 31, 2005: WordPress 2.0 (Duke) release extends customization possibilities through custom templates & themes.
• Jan 22, 2007: WordPress 2.1 (Ella) release with new features such as autosave & tabbed editing.
• Feb 11, 2010: Mobile apps for WordPress launched for Android & Blackberry devices.
• Jun 17, 2010: WordPress 3.0 (Thelonious) release with a brand-new default theme – ‘Twenty Ten’ and new APIs.
• Nov 3, 2010: Celebrates 1 million mobile users & announcement of WordPress for Nokia devices.
• Sep 27, 2011: Release of WooCommerce plugin that converts WordPress site into an online store.
• Jan 28, 2013: WooCommerce celebrates 500,000 downloads!
• Nov 9, 2015: WordPress covers 25% of the CMS market share with 1 out of 4 websites built using it.
• Dec 6, 2018: WordPress 5.0 (Bebo) release containing the famous Guttenberg editor along with a compatible default theme.
• Aug 11, 2020: WordPress 5.5 (Eckstine) release with lazy-loading, auto-updates for plugins & themes, and more.
• June 2022: WordPress seizes more than 60% of the CMS market share.

Fast-Forward to the Future of WordPress

A strong stance in the CMS market and strong community support make WordPress a hard-to-beat platform for other competitors.
The future of WordPress is beyond excellence! Some of the future predictions of WordPress are

Gutenberg on Other Platforms

WordPress is working on creating a standalone version of Gutenberg and we can expect to see it on platforms other than WordPress in the future.

Real-Time Multi-Author Collaboration

Gutenberg Phase 4 will be released by 2025, which will ease content collaboration with features like co-editing, co-authoring, and commenting.

Shift From PHP to JavaScript

In recent years, WordPress has been shifting more towards JavaScript, although the platform is based on PHP. However, PHP will still remain intact in the backend stack.

More Ease of Use

WordPress is constantly trying to incorporate new features in the Gutenberg editor. We can expect new features that would ease content production through templating, easy options for styles, new typographies, and CSS.

WordPress Community, Camps, and Contributions

• Completely User-Driven
  Being a community-driven platform, people like you and I contribute to its worldwide development.
• 1600+ Groups 782K+ Members
  WP community is very vast. The official community counts more than 782K members and 1600 groups.
• 1111 WordCamps
  WordPress peeps organize informal gatherings called ‘WordCamps’ for all the WP-lovers, where they share knowledge, experiences, and network.

WordPress Security, Performance, and Key Highlight

• Support PHP 8
  The latest WordPress version is compatible with PHP 8.1, which offers blazing-fast performance.
• Strong Encryption
  The core platform comes with robust encryption features that offer high-end security.
• Proposal for a Plugin Checker
  Like WordPress theme checkers, WordPress proposes to release a plugin checker tool soon to mitigate the security risks of third-party plugins.
• Fluid Typography
  The latest WordPress 6.1 version now offers fluid typography support by default.

WordPress Facts and Figures Till Date

Here are some fantastic things about our beloved WordPress to add to the 20th celebration:

• WordPress.com (Blogging Platform) & WordPress.org (CMS) are two different products.
• WordPress is used by 43.2% of all websites on the internet, and 65.2% of the sites use a CMS.
• The official WordPress repository contains over 9,000 free themes and 60,000 free plugins.
• Yoast SEO is the most active WordPress plugin with the highest favorable ratings.
• Divi & Astra are the most popular WordPress themes in the top 1 million sites.
• The usage of WordPress CMS increased by 12% YoY from 2011 to 2022.
• 20.4% of WordPress sites use WooCommerce Plugins, which means one out of 5 WordPress users is an eCommerce store owner.
• WordPress has remained to be fastest-growing CMS platform consistently for 12 years.

How to Contribute to WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source platform, and you can contribute to its progress in many ways, such as:

• Fix Bugs in WordPress Core
• Write Codes for WordPress Core
• Helping in WordPress Translation
• Spread Knowledge in Support Forums
• Improvise WordPress Documentation
• Teaching WordPress to Others

Celebrating 20 Wonderful Years of WordPress

Finally, it’s time to wrap up the two decades of WordPress success. Let’s appreciate the platform that made website building accessible for everyone!

Just 20 spent, 200 more to come!

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