WordPress Content Management System Overview

WordPress has become one of the most used, if not the most popular content management system. What began as a personal project has now become an integral part of the Internet’s architecture, powering countless websites.

While quite familiar to you, there might be some things about WordPress that you aren’t aware of. The following statistics on WordPress usage will clarify on just how popular the platform is and maybe even give accustomed WordPress veterans reason to think and say “Really?”

Prepare to be astonished.

1. WordPress sites publish 17 posts per second worldwide

It’s a fact that in 2014, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (meaning blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites that have the Jetpack plugin installed) published on average 17 blog posts per second. That comes down to 1,023 blog post per minute, 61,391 in an hour and just below 1.5 million per day. And that’s not even counting those sites for which WordPress can’t collect any statistics.

2. Total traffic is 14.7 billion monthly page views

It appears that all of the activity is paying off, resulting in huge traffic. This year alone, blogs in the WordPress network have gained an average of 14.7 billion page views per month. That’s twice as many people as there are on Earth!

3. 5.5 million comments per month are received on WordPress blogs

Each month of this year combined produced on average 5.5 million comments. People love to talk, or debate.. Plus, these are approved comments, which made it through the spam checking.

If the blog.akismet.com stats are any indication, the number of spam comments generated at the same time is about 24x higher. That means besides the legitimate comments, WordPress blogs get monthly, they get blasted by 132 million spammers at the same time.

4. WordPress gets 37 million global monthly searches

WordPress is very popular and continues to grab attention. The platform’s growing reputation is also reflected in its Google searches.

In the U.S. alone, “WordPress” as a keyword receives around 450,000 search requests every month. That’s not even including searches for “WordPress templates,” “WordPress plugins,” and other WordPress related information. Overall, WordPress-related terms receive more than 37 million global searches every month.

As for how the platform stacks up against its competitors: Google Trends sees WordPress twice as popular as Blogger, Joomla, and Drupal.

5. The company behind WordPress.com only has 283 employees.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is really not large. Currently, the team behind the popular blogging platform (and its many side projects) is just 283 people strong. That is probably one of the reasons why Automattic is always looking for new people to join their team.

6. WordPress 4.0 has 14.1 million downloads

However, thanks to the development community and the work of a multitude of volunteer contributors, that number is sufficient even for the development of WordPress’ self-hosted variety. The latest project alone, WordPress 4.0 “Benny”, has been downloaded 14.1 million times and counting.

7. WordPress sites are only 22% up to date

In the past, WordPress has often made headlines due to hacked sites and security concerns, something which its developers tried to address quickly with new and improved versions.

However, not all WordPress users agree. While download numbers for the latest version are impressive, overall there are a lot of outdated sites running with WordPress out there. Only a little more than a third (33.9%) have updated to version 4.0.

The picture which WordPress.org paints is even darker. According to their data, the percentage of WordPress users running their site on the latest version is just 11.4%. Even if we stick with the median of 22.25%, that’s pretty small. Learn why and how to update your WordPress site.

8. WordPress has 51 translations

The number of languages which WordPress is available in is slowly growing. From Albanian, Dutch and Japanese all the way to Icelandic, Persian and even Scottish Gaelic, you can set your WordPress dashboard to any language you like.

As Matt Mullenweg also stated in his “State of the Word” speech, in 2014 non-English downloads surpassed English downloads for the first time ever. That means in the future we can expect for plugins and features to first appear in another language and be translated into English instead of the other way around.

This focus on multi-language support opens up opportunities for WordPress users worldwide. Plus, never worry if your preferred language is not available, WordPress contributors are constantly working on expanding the list of WordPress translations.

9. 34,000+ WordPress plugins and counting

One of the main reasons WordPress is top of many other platforms is its extendability. Plugins are available for all means and purposes. Whatever feature you would like on your website, in most cases you will find a WordPress plugin which can do just that. WordPress.org’s database for plugins has recently surpassed 34,000.

10. Akismet is the no.1 plugin

With more than 24 million downloads, Akismet, the popular spam protection plugin, has done just that. However, the fact that it is pre-installed in every newer WordPress build might be a factor.
On second place we currently find Contact Form 7 (21 million downloads) and third goes to Michael Torbert’s All in One SEO Pack (20 million downloads), two other WordPress household names. These three plugins alone almost make up for 1% of total plugin downloads from the WordPrestory.

11. 46 million downloads for WordPress

By July 2013 the free version of WordPress had been downloaded 46 million times, which means that since 2003 it averaged one hundred downloads per day. Of course, blogging has gotten more popular in recent years, hence the daily download numbers are significantly higher in 2014 than in the past.
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12. 25% of WordPress users make a living off of it

Another interesting tidbit from the “State of the Word” 2014 was that a full quarter of the people who answered the WordPress survey make a full time living off of the CMS. If you combine this information with a 2012 survey which found that the median hourly rate of WordPress projects is $50, you don’t have to worry too much that WordPress developers are in low circumstances.

13. WordPress is popular with businesses and not with news sites

Among the top one million websites in the world, the greater share of those powered by WordPress are related to business. They greatly outnumber news sites, where the usage of WordPress is not popular.

Given the fact that the online marketing world raves about WordPress, this is not all that surprising. The CMS system is among the topics marketers most love to blog about. Keywords related to it also tend to have very high competition in search engine marketing.

Conclusion

WordPress is taking the online world by storm. The platform’s importance is increasing every year as more and more people use it as their easier solution for building websites. Currently there is no end in sight and no reason why this development can’t continue. If you doubt yourself whether investing in your WordPress skills is a waste of time, you can put it to rest.

If you want to know more about WordPress, talk to Team Discovery.