WordPress is used by 43% of all websites.

  • WordPress powers 10x more websites than its closest competitor.
  • The world’s most popular ecommerce platform is WooCommerce (built on WordPress), with over 36% of the market share
  • There are over 20,000 WordPress themes, including around 10,000 free themes in the WordPress Themes Directory
  • There are around 60,000 free WordPress plugins on the WP plugin database

This is what makes it the most flexible tool in the world for building websites.

Susie Tobias gave this Ask the Expert presentation to celebrate the 20h Anniversary of WordPress. Susie, aka Wise Genius, has been building WordPress websites for over 13 years so has seen many of the things evolve that make WordPress the world’s best loved website builder.

This is the PDF of Susie’s presentation: WordPress is 20

What is WordPress?

There are two versions:

WordPress.com is a website platform that comes with a domain name and web hosting service included in all of its plans. It has limited features and aims to make the website creation process easy for beginners.

WordPress.org is a not for profit organisation run by thousands of volunteers all over the world. It’s a highly customizable content management system (CMS) that has a huge selection of themes and plugins that enables the creation of any type of website, from blogs to eCommerce stores. Users need to supply their own domain name and hosting service.

Why is WordPress good for small businesses?

  • WordPress is so much more than a CMS. Released on May 27, 2003, WordPress is now over 20 years old and still getting better and better.
  • Its open-source code, flexible infrastructure, and huge database of plugins and themes enable developers to use WordPress.org to create any kind of website imaginable, from small personal blogs to complex business websites for the world’s biggest companies.
  • For small businesses it’s biggest strength is the worldwide army of developers who all use the same free source code and are constantly working on making it better. This means that if the person who built your website isn’t available, there will always be someone else who is.
  • You can update your website and change its appearance without losing content and you always own your own data. Moving your content away from many other website builders can be tricky and expensive.
  • It’s very SEO friendly.
  • You don’t need to know any code.
  • New security updates are released often so it’s very secure if you keep your site up to date.

What else is unique about WordPress?

WordPress.org is simply a domain name where anyone can download the free version of WordPress. It isn’t a company and its trademark is held by the WordPress Foundation. Its code is open source and constantly modified by hundreds of thousands of volunteers who support the continuing development of the WordPress aim to democratise publishing and make the web a better place.

Automattic is the company set-up by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, to create income, namely through WordPress.com & products like Akismet & WooCommerce. The creation of the WordPress Foundation in 2010, along with the trademark transfer separated the free open-source project from the commercial endeavours of Automattic.

What’s Jazz got to do with it?

Each major update of WordPress is named after a famous Jazz musician.

Matt Mullenweg believes that jazz is an art form that shares a lot of philosophical underpinnings with how WordPress is built.

The formula for jazz is Music + Freedom. Jazz can, with intention, be different every time, and unique to every performer and the aim of WordPress is to provide an opportunity for each individual to express their creativity in their own way and evolve a new future.

That sums up WordPress beautifully!

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Read Everything You Need to Know About Websites by Susie Tobias.
Read Why our Network is Like a Jazz Band
Connect with Susie on LinkedIn to get regular updates about WordPress and how to use it for your business.