Facts you didn’t know about WordPress

by | Jun 15, 2024 | Web Design

CMS tools like WordPress have made organising and publishing online content infinitely easier for millions of users. With a market share of 63% (in 2024), WordPress is the most popular tool of its kind in the world. WordPress competitors Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and Blogger have market shares of 2.4%, 1.4%, 2.04%, and 0.8%, respectively, while the cumulative market share of other CMS tools is 30.36%.

The popularity of WordPress is undeniable: the ever-growing number of page views across WordPress blogs, themes worth thousands of pounds, highly successful startups associated with WordPress, and a host of famous clients, all attest to the fact that WordPress has soared high above the competition.

Still, WordPress has also been troubled by frequent security issues threatening to undermine its enormous popularity. Keep reading to learn more about this and other interesting facts about the number one CMS tool on the market.

How Big Is WordPress?

Have you ever wondered just how popular WordPress really is? WordPress search in Google will give you a dizzying 1.6 billion results, which makes WordPress the most sought-after CMS tool out there. The number of websites powered by WordPress is continually increasing and is currently at 17 million. WordPress users write around 69.8 million new posts in WordPress each month, which means that over 542 million words are written in WordPress blogs every single day.

The steady growth of page views across blogs on wordpress.com clearly shows that WordPress will remain the leader among CMS tools for the foreseeable future. In July 2013, there were 11.2 billion pageviews on WordPress blogs. The following year, that number grew to 15.8 million. In 2015, there were 19.8 billion page views of WordPress blogs, and in 2018, WordPress blogs were accessed 22.2 billion times. WordPress continues to maintain its popularity among CMS users with each new software version. The latest version, WordPress 6.5., has been downloaded over 69.8 million times since it was first released.

Themes & Plugins

Being one of the most customisable CMS tools on the market has brought WordPress millions of loyal clients. There are thousands of both free and premium themes and plugins on WordPress to suit every type of user. WordPress currently offers 4,081 free themes and 46,291 free plugins.

The most popular free themes on WordPress are Responsive, Customizr, Zerif Life, Vantage, and Hueman, while the top most downloaded free plugins are Regenerate Thumbnail, Aksimet, Woo Commerce, Yoast SEO and Hello Dolly. Top premium themes on WordPress are Avada, Elementor, Divi, Enfold, Betheme, and Bridge, while the most popular premium plugins include Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, LayerSlider, Ultimate Addons, and UberMenu.

Premium WordPress themes are extremely profitable on the online theme marketplace ThemeForest. 50% of all WordPress themes make at least £1,000 a month, while 25% of them make £2,500 a month and 15% of themes bring in around £5,000 each month. 7% of themes earn £7,500 per month, while 5% of all themes on ThemeForest make as much as £10,000 in a month.

WordPress Companies

Even if you are an expert user of WordPress, chances are you’ve never heard of companies named Automattic, Envato, and WPEngine. Automattic is the name of WordPress parent company. It was founded in 2005, and it employs 490 people. The highly successful startup managed to raise $190.6 million from 15 investors over the course of 9 years.

Envato is the company that produces all those popular themes and plugins on WordPress. The Australia-based company has 180 employees and 80 contractors working. In 2015 alone, the design marketplace made $400 million.

The hosted service provider for blogs and websites powered by WordPress is called WPEngine. The provider company is specifically tailored to WordPress websites and apps. WPEngine has 313 employees, and it notably raised $40.712 million from 9 investors in just five years.

Security Issues

Over the years, WordPress-based blogs and websites have been at the center of several security issues. Out of all hacked websites in 2016, 78% of them were powered by WordPress, while the rest were using other CMS tools like Joomla, Magento, and Drupal.

In 2011, 18 million WordPress users were compromised due to an attack, and in 2013, another Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) was launched via more than 162,000 WordPress websites. The following year, WordPress suffered yet another security breach when it was forced to reset 100,000 passwords to protect its users in the aftermath of the infamous leak of 5 million Google accounts.

WordPress-powered websites have also been implicated in one of the most highly publicised financial scandals in recent years, the Panama Papers Breach. In April 2016, 2.6 TB of sensitive data and 11.5 million confidential documents were stolen and leaked using WordPress sites.

Who Uses WordPress

WordPress is widely popular with all types of users, from complete novices to expert developers. The number one CMS in the world boasts an impressive list of famous clients, which includes globally recognized brands and companies, as well as high-profile celebrities who use WordPress for their blogs and websites.

Major brands like Samsung, Coca Cola, Star Wars, Mercedes-Benz, and Sony PlayStation all have WordPress-powered pages. Some of the world’s busiest websites read by millions around the globe are WordPress users, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine, Reuters, and Harvard Business Review. Technology blogs like Mashable, Digg, Boing Boing, Tech Crunch, and IGN are also among notable WordPress clients.

There are far too many celebrity WordPress users to mention them all, but some of the most popular ones are rapper Jay-Z, comedian Russell Brand, singer Sir Tom Jones, former NBA player Kobe Bryant, and action star Sylvester Stallone.

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