Whenever I visit a site I can usually tell whether it’s WordPress or not within an instant — there’s just something about a WordPress site that is distinctive. Super-clean permalinks are usually a dead giveaway. One thing I’ve been noticing a lot lately is on my guilty pleasure for tech news, Techmeme, it seems like almost every link I click is to a WordPress-powered site. Fortunately Techmeme provides a leaderboard showing both rank and % of space a site has taken up in headlines in the past thirty days.
The list changes almost every day but went ahead and took a snapshot of the top 100 as of January 16th and ran down the platform for each one, here’s how it ended up:
WordPress comes in at 43%, custom or bespoke systems at 42%, and then the others. When you take into effect Techmeme’s “presence” factor WP jumps to 48.8% of presence in the top 100 and all Blogsmith, Drupal, Blogspot, Tumblr, and Typepad combined are 8.4%. If you curious of the raw data, here’s the spreadsheet with the platforms.
This is just a snapshot, it’d be interesting to see how this evolves over time. It’s a small slice of the world of websites, but a very influential one. I’ve actually reached out to Gabe Rivera a few times to sponsor the leaderboard page, putting a W logo next to the ones that run WordPress in the table, but nothing has come of it yet.
Esta es la prueba irrefutable de que WordPress es el mejor CMS que existe en el mundo!
Hey Matt,
I’ve been working within the WordPress community since the early days and we had a chance to say hello at one of the first WordPress NYC meetups so many years ago. Since then, I’ve gone so much with WordPress for my clients and partners. Not only is WordPress powering the Techmeme 100, but down here in Cuenca, Ecuador, where I’m staying for two months to learn Spanish and do a bit of cultural immersion, I’ve been touting the benefits of WordPress to many expats here who tell me they are gravitating to WordPress.com from Blogger and other sites.
Recently, I helped an author and professor, Sterling Kerr, get his blog (sterlingkerr.com) and book site (thefutureofchinabook.com) up on WordPress.com. Because I’m immersed in the .org world of self-hosted installs and custom builds, I hadn’t played with the service in a while. What I found was certainly excellent. The ability to switch between owned blogs easily. A marketplace for themes and other upgrades, and a super stellar Help section, with Happiness Engineers that get back to you quickly with answers to your questions.
Another group here wants to start an online magazine about Cuenca and we’ll employ Edit Flow, which is a great tool for managing your story budget, as well as the new default 2014 theme, which couldn’t come soon enough as they want to lead with images.
If that’s not enough, I’m also converting another author’s disparate network of sites all to a single WP multisite on our own hosted platform that we’ve set up with Linode. WordPress is, for all intents and purpose, a mature CMS. In that, it’s providing people like me, my partners, my developers and designers with work in the same way iOS developers are advancing their careers on that platform. But, because WordPress is mainly free on the .com and open and web-based (of course you can use apps to publish), it’s far more accessible to many more people.
I look forward to future advancements in WordPress and I’m happy to support WordPress through WordPress Chapel Hill, which I began to organize a few years ago and WordPress Westchester, which has grown considerably since I handed it off to another group of folks when I left NYC for the warmer environs of North Carolina. I’ve also presented at WordCamps in Raleigh and NYC.
I’ll be moving to Asheville when I return to the USA on the 28th of January and I’ve already joined that WP Meetup community.
These are great stats and it must be a kick to see how WordPress has advanced to becoming the leading open source CMS. I love knowing that I’ve been part and parcel to the growth of WordPress and am really committing even more of my time in the next year, as well.
Hi Matt, glad to see this statistic. I have been a WordPress early adopter and thanks to you and your team and the WordPress community to turn into what it is today. I am amazed how many people make both ends meet just because of WordPress 🙂
Interesting. So a bit less than the 52% for WP I found in the top 100 blogs (as ranked by Technorati): http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/05/07/wordpress-top-100-blogs/
Maybe he’ll listen now that you’ve posted about it.
Blogsmith really?! And more than Drupal. I never heard of it until now in wikipedia, and looks something from 90s.
No, not at all. I knew Drupal in 2008, and one of my teachers created our institution’s website with Drupal. Website is still powered by Drupal. http://iict.usindh.edu.pk However I’m a responsible WordPresser who doesn’t insult other CMSes anyway. Drupal/Joomla are open source as same as WP but our WP is more wonderful.
It feels good that WP is powering almost half of world wide web. I’m with WP and my blog is powered by WP.org. Best Wishes Matt.
Matt – This is an awesome report and thanks for sharing. I love how you sourced the data and created the graphics yourself. Gives me some ideas on content creation.
It’s pretty impressive how many websites, especially small businesses, are powered by WordPress. One of the best tools I’ve installed lately is the WordPress Version Check Chrome extension. Whenever I’m on a WordPress site, it alerts me by showing a WordPress logo in the address bar. I know already have a keen eye for spotting WordPress, but you should check it out when you get a chance:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wordpress-version-check/hbeikkjblcogpkdnchpffgefhkilodnn
So where is Joomla?
Well that’s mighty impressive. Is it possible or feasible (or let’s just say, practical, for that matter) for WordPress.org to acquire Firefox (and it’s parent company, of course) as both are web-centric as well as runaway leaders of the pack in their respective fields? Just thinking out loud.