People are abuzz because it looks like the W3Techs survey of the web now has WordPress at 25% market share.
Sometimes it goes up and down through the course of a month, but it’s still a pretty fun milestone that we can now say about one in four websites are now powered by the scrappy open source underdog with its roots stretching all the way back to a single person in Corsica, France. We should be comfortably past 25% by the end of the year.
The big opportunity is still the 57% of websites that don’t use any identifiable CMS yet, and that’s where I think there is still a ton of growth for us (and I’m also rooting for all the other open source CMSes).
If you want to celebrate with us come to the first-ever WordCamp US event next month in Philadelphia (tickets still available) — it’s shaping up to be an amazing event. We just published the schedule and there are some amazing speakers and sessions.
BRAVO Matt!!!! Way to go !!! WordPress CMS, WordPress for Apps, WordPress for Everything!!! How is WordPress for Apps coming along?
Congratulations Mr. Mullenweg. Very impressive. So what is the secret to your success 😉
Many congratulations!
Matt, this is obviously an amazing feat and you and your team should be praised for this.
However, I am worried about mono-culture. You indicate that there are still 57% of websits which do not use an identifiable CMS. Isn’t that actually great? Isn’t this actually one of the strength of the web: diversity in its stacks while we all agree on *protocols*?
I’m sure you agree that having fewer and fewer implementations will result in poorer security and innovation for example.
So, maybe, rather than targetting these 57% of sites which do not use a CMS, I’d much rather see WP (and you!) focus on making sure the path to owning an online identity is even simpler for these couple bilion people who don’t have any or rely on a very few number of social networks to do so!
I think it can if the software is proprietary, but I think open source generally grows stronger and more secure the more popular it is and more people it has working on it. We all benefit from a common platform we can build on and then differentiate on top of it, instead of reinventing the wheel over and over again for no good reason.
Fair point!
Matt,
You will find the following forecast interesting – WordPress Market Share in 2020 :
https://generatewp.com/forecast-wordpress-market-share-in-2020/
It’s based on historical stats by w3techs.
Great to hear your support for other open source CMS’s Matt. Hooking wordpress core up with webmention and micropub would help support that.
from looking at the spec, webmentions sound like a new way to repeat the mistakes done in the design of trackbacks and pingbacks.
Today 203 WordPressers in WordCamp Cantabria (Spain) have received the new with enthusiasm.
A greeting Matt!
Congrats, Matt.
Next step: The world’s largest e-commerce platform 🙂
Don’t they already have that with WooCommerce?
25% is probably on the low end due to plugins that disable the detection of WordPress sites. Still impressive and plenty of room to grow. 🙂
This is a wonderful achievement. Congratulations!
Something I’d like to see is a way to make it even easier to host a WordPress blog on your own server – right now shared hosting is ripe for an overhaul. It would also be interesting to think about how users can more easily layer services (rather than plugins that they have to keep up to date) on top of their installation – a kind of third-party progressive enhancement of WP sites, like you’ve done with Jetpack.
WordPress is wonderful software and I’m delighted it’s so successful. Here’s to the next 25%.
I think cutting into that 57% will require changing website owner/admnistrator demographics. I suspect those who use static sites will probably continue to do so. It’s hard to compete against the simplicity of a static website for people who are happy doing things in that way.
Hi Matt
Whats the story re Corsica…. been googling and cant find more! Did you code the first line in Corsica? Was it to enable blogging on your travels in Corsica…. either way its interesting! Whats the Corsica connection?
Thanks for wordpress too…. you nailed that one…. all hail the new wp-api and the future of decoupling! Doing many apps now with it… high end ones too!
R
The predecessor to WordPress was b2, which was started by Michel Valdrighi in Corsica, France.
A big pat on the back to everyone who has been a part of WordPress over the years!
IMHO WordPress strikes a great balance between features and ease of use – I often have clients who are genuinely surprised how easy it is to log in and update their posts and pages.
Coming from a “traditional software” background the other thing that really stands out about WordPress are the hooks. If was certainly the extensibility that first got me hooked (pun intended).
Honest question: what proportion of that is blogspam?
Probably very low because of the W3Techs methodology.
Great to see WordPress continuing to soar.
I’m a longtime (B2) user and supporter and I’m delighted to hear this. Congrats Matt.