Happy Birthday, WordPress!

On 27 May 2003 WordPress started its journey! Now has reached its 14th birthday!

WordPress CMS has come a very long way from just a simple blog application. Today, WordPress is behind news portals, social media websites and thousands of blogs!

WordPress key element is that it continues to grow.

Mullenweg Matt WordPress

What Matt shared about 14th Birthday:

Today is 14 years from the very first release of WordPress. The interface I’m using to write this (Calypso) is completely unrecognizable from what WordPress looked and worked like even a few years ago. Fourteen years in, I’m waking up every day excited about what’s coming next for us. The progress of the editor and CLI so far this year is awesome, and I’m looking forward to that flowing into improvements for customization and the REST API. Thanks as always to Mike for kicking off this crazy journey, all the people chipping in to make WordPress better, and Konstantin and Erick for surprising me with the cool cake above.

WordPress Facts

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.WordPress is installed on a web server that is either part of an Internet hosting service or a network host in its own right.

WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

The History

WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPLv2 (or later). It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product.

For a bit more about WordPress’ history check out the WordPress Wikipedia page or this page on their own Codex.

How it works

The first case may be a service like WordPress.com, for example, and the second case could be a computer running the software package WordPress.org. A local computer may be used for single-user testing and learning purposes. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system.

WordPress is installed on a web server that is either part of an Internet hosting service or a network host in its own right. The first case may be a service like WordPress.com, for example, and the second case could be a computer running the software package WordPress.org. A local computer may be used for single-user testing and learning purposes. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system.

WordPress was used by more than 27.5% of the top 10 million websites as of February 2017. WordPress is the most popular website management or blogging system in use on the Web, supporting more than 60 million websites.

WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, as a fork of b2/cafelog. WordPress is released under the GPLv2 (or later) license from the Free Software Foundation.

Source: About WordPress

Surprising Statistics

The most recent stats are showing that since March 2016, WordPress is actually powering 26.4% of the Web, and it’s on the rise. It is still by far the most used CMS, with 59.4% market share. Also interestingly on a daily basis, there are over 500 sites being created on WordPress. Source: managewp.com

Here are some incredible statistics:

• were published more than 660 million posts on WordPress.com
• were made more than 655 million comments
• that is on average 1,808,219 posts per day!
• the average number of daily posts and times that by the shortest recommended word count that is 542,465,753 words per day!
• there are over 44 thousand different plugins
• WordPress available in 56 languages

Happenings in the Year!

Source: www.cloudways.com written by Mustaasam Saleem  May 27, 2017

Controversies

• Matt Mullenweg refused to participate in President Trump’s program of creating a Muslim Registry.
• Jetpack ignites controversy with its alternate marketplace for free themes.
• WordPress.com Business users could now install third party themes and plugins.
• Matt Mullenweg launched WordPress Growth Council to make a think-tank for individuals and organizations.

WordPress Updates

• WordPress has updated its recommended requirements. The list include PHP 7.0 or higher, MySQL 5.6 (or MariaDB 10.0) and HTTPS support.
• WooCommerce undergoes a brand reorganization as WooThemes redirects to the main business website.
• Despite the threat of license revocation, Automattic will continue to use React.js in its Calypso application.
• WordPress now powers 27% of the Internet. Customizer is the new bet for the continued CMS dominance.
• “Early in 2017, we will only promote hosting partners that provide a SSL certificate by default in their accounts” Mullenweg said.
• Finally, WordPress gets a homepage redesign. It is all soft colors and cool gradients.
• The UI prototype for Gutenberg, the block based experimental editor is now available.
• The WP Google Docs add-on for Chrome is now available.
• The official Adsense WP plugin by Google retires in May 2017.
• WP Plugin Directory gets a new design and improved search algorithm.
• WordPress 4.8 will no longer support IE 8, 9 and 10.
• The official WP plugin for Shopify is no more!
• WordPress core developer John Blackbourn announced the removal of HHVM from Testing Infrastructure and suggested users to switching to PHP 7+.

Community

• The year’s big gesture was the Syed Balkhi’s donation of WP.org to The WordPress Foundation.
• Advanced WordPress Facebook Group Gave Away $40K Worth of Prizes. The swag bag included: Free Hosting Credit from Cloudways, Licenses to Yoast SEO Premium, Elegant Themes Lifetime Accounts, WP Rocket Personal Licenses, and much more!
• WordPress powers the official website of the Obama Foundation.
• Stack Overflow reports market oversaturation for WP developers.
• WordCamp Europe attendees were denied visas due to low entry fee which justifies international travel.

Major Releases

WordPress 4.6 “Pepper” was launched on August 16, 2016 which includes:

• Shiny Updates for Themes & Plugins
• Native Fonts in the Admin Panel
• Detection of Broken Links

And WordPress 4.7 “Sarah Vaughan” was launched on December 6, 2016 which includes:

• Twenty Seventeen
• Theme Starter Content
• Video Headers
• Custom CSS
• Edit Shortcuts From Customizer Preview
• Post Type Templates
• Editor Improvements
• Dashboard in your language
• PDF Thumbnail Previews
• WordPress REST API