The numbers are in, and they have been crunched: WordPress powers approximately 25 percent of all websites that use a content management system (CMS). That means that one out of four websites is running on the popular CMS.
WordPress started in 2003, and it has been garnering the support of millions of online users. It's the preferred CMS of most bloggers, as it offers a ton of tools, plugins and themes — plus it's free.
W3Techs published the data, measuring both usage and market share in monthly, quarterly and yearly time frames.
"WordPress is used by 58.7 percent of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 25.0 percent of all websites," W3Techs writes on its page for WordPress.
Through each month, it's natural for these figures to go up and down, but according to the report, WordPress' performance over the years has been steadily going up.
"The big opportunity is still the 57 percent 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," Matt Mullenweg, one of the lead developers of WordPress, says on his blog post.
Holding over half of the entire market share is nothing short of remarkable, but it's not all ups. Being placed on the pinnacle might lead to hacker attacks, not to mention that WordPress has a history of security issues.
Of course, the attacks are not limited to WordPress, as other CMS are vulnerable to them too. Simply put, constantly updating the running CMS will reduce the risk of being targeted.
It seems that WordPress' milestone will be the mark of a continuous uptrend.
"Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call 'home,'" WordPress says on its website, and it has been more or less proven by the impressive figures of W3Techs' report.
Photo: Serge Kij | Flickr
