How about something a little different on the blog today? I was sent a great infographic recently and thought it informative so wanted to share it with you all. It’s about the history of WordPress–where it’s been and where it’s going. I recently pondered the future of the WordPress dashboard and computing interfaces over at Torque:
I’ll get to the infographic in just a moment. First, let’s walk down memory lane for a moment. WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform and it has an interesting history. It’s come a long way since its humble beginnings. It pre-dates Web 2.0 and Social Media – starting in 2003 as a fork of b2 cafelog.
Throughout the years lots of new features have been added. 2004 saw increased security and the ability to add plugins. 2005 saw the addition of themes and customization, the WYSIWYG editor known as TinyMCE, and a redesigned backend. A default theme was added. WordPress.com was launched.
In 2006 the first WordCamp is held. 2008 saw a lot of upgrades with a cleaner dashboard with widgets for stats, tag management, built-in galleries, a custom interface and automatic upgrades.
By 2009 the download count had reached over 10.3 million. Updates included an image editor and easier video embedding. Just a year later the download count hit 65 million! By 2011 WordPress powered 14.7% of all websites. The dashboard was redesigned and a distraction-free mode was added which allowed writers to work in a clean writing environment.
2012 brought media uploading and new theme customization. New default themes would be released every year. 2013 saw an admin dashboard facelift and WordPress became fully responsive. 2014 saw 25 million downloads in just 2 months – showing just how important and popular WordPress was. It brought an improved visual editor, gallery previews, and it was translated into 40 languages.
In 2015, 23% of the web runs on WordPress. That’s 74.6 million websites. There’ve been over 46 million downloads. The plugin count has reached 37,000. Over 350 WordCamps will be held in 150 cities in 48 countries. The latest version – 4.3 – saw better passwords and a focus on mobile.
What does the future hold for WordPress? With an evolution this fast and impressive it’s bound to be good.
You can see more information and get some great WordPress training at WordPress for Beginners at udemy.com.
Here’s a look at their infographic:
