Every one in four websites you visit is powered by WordPress. Huge, right?
WordPress is more than a blogging platform. Earlier people used it voraciously for blogging as it was easy to publish stuff. As days passed by many realized that the same features that made publishing articles easy can also lend a hand to publish web pages in a website.
It enables us to create anything from a simple blog to a fully functioning website. Many leading companies including Forbes, eBay, The New York Times, CNN, Forbes, Vogue, MTV news, The Rolling Stones, Facebook, and NASA have chosen WordPress to power their websites, making it the most famous and widely used CMS worldwide.
WordPress is awesome. Seriously, it does so much that you might not even be aware of.
Take a look at some of the WordPress facts and myths that you probably didn’t know.
WordPress facts
- WordPress powers 29% of the internet – Source
- WordPress was released in 2003, and it’s now 15 years old – Source
- WordPress has only 673 employees source – Source
- Over 409 million people view WordPress blogs every month – Source
- The keyword “WordPress” gets googled around 2.8 million times every month – Source
- WordPress has its own store know as ‘WordPress Swag’ that sells shirts and hoodies and rotates other products through the lineup on a regular basis – Source
- As of February 2018, the market share trend for WordPress is 60.1% – Source
- Number of page views on WordPress every month is 23.1 billion pages – Source
- WordPress.org has an official fan page where users submit thousands of media
- Top 10 languages that use WordPress to publish blogs are: – Source
- English: 71%
Spanish: 4.7%
Indonesian: 2.4%
Portuguese (Brazil): 2.3%
French: 1.5%
Russian: 1.3%
German: 1.2%
Italian: 1%
Turkish: 0.7%
Dutch: 0.6% - Users produce about 87.2 million new posts and 48.5 million new comments each month. – Source
- WordPress is used by 29.7% of all the websites – Source
- WordPress has 54, 253 plugins and the number keeps growing – Source
- Totally 172 translations are available for WordPress – Source
- Top celebrities who use WordPress are Katty Perry, Usain Bolt, Snoop Dogg, Felicia Day, Gabriel Iglesias, Channing Tatum, Kim Kardashian, Sylvester Stallone, William Shatner, Wil Wheaton, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Russell Brand, and Kylie Minogue. – Source
- WordPress developers’ average salary according to Indeed is $70,425, according to Neuvoo found $63,852, and according to PayScale $50,541.
- WordPress version 4.9 has been downloaded 50,868,682 times – Source
- WordPress can be used for intranet sites, too – Source
- 32 major versions of WordPress has been released since the platform’s inception – Source
- Genesis and Divi are the two most popular WordPress theme – Source
- WordPress community has 236,350 members with 575 groups and in 87 countries – Source
- Gutenberg is a new WordPress editor that will ship with WordPress 5.0 – Source
- Akismet, Yoast SEO, Jetpack, and contact form are the most popular plugins – Source
- The famous ‘’W” logo of WordPress was designed by Jason Santa Maria – Source
- WordPress Wiggle is the unofficial dance of the WordPress people – Source
- Wapuu is the official WordPress mascot – Source
- A live look at the activity across WordPress.comSource
WordPress myths
As a commonly used platform for building websites, misconceptions around WordPress have spread like wildfire. Some of them are too bad that it keeps people away from WordPress.
So we’ve compiled a list of myths revolving around WordPress and have given answers for it.
WordPress isn’t scalable
We have no idea why many believe that WordPress isn’t scalable. Some think that it’s only suitable for small blogs and petite businesses. And other have questions like, will it be able to handle my growing traffic? Which features will crash due to the increased volume of traffic?
WordPress is completely scalable. You’ve read the WordPress facts, celebrities to big corporations rely on WordPress for their websites.
If your website goes down due to traffic surge, then you have a poor web host. It is not the fault of WordPress.
Too many plugins slow your website
Quoting from Mika Epstein‘s article How many plugins –
When people ask why their site is slow, sometimes my coworkers will say “It’s the plugins, right? He has 40 plugins!” and I’ll say “Maybe.” Then I look at what the plugins are because it’s never the number of plugins, but their quality
Plugins extend the functionality of a WordPress website. And without those said plugins, you won’t be able to improve your website.
Just don’t add plugins blindly. Steer clear from vendors you don’t trust. Before downloading a plugin, check for ratings, reviews, support, and a number of downloads.
WordPress is an insecure platform
WordPress is as secure as any other website on the internet. Outdated themes, plugins, software, week usernames + passwords are some of the major reasons for website attacks.
All these items can be easily mitigated. You have to check for regular updates and do it manually or set it on automatic update.
Security of a website has more to do with how you manage and maintain your website.
WordPress is just a template
For starters, WordPress is a content management system. A template is a preconfigured layout. At a glance, they seem similar, but they are actually different.
WordPress is an open-source that can be downloaded, installed and hosted anywhere. Squarespace or Wix templates can only be downloaded. But, you can build a WordPress theme from scratch.
Certain backend functions on the WordPress are the same, however, in front-end experimentations possibilities are limitless. With the wide range of plugins and themes, you can customize your website accordingly. If you’re looking for something specific to fulfill your unique needs, you’re probably going to need the help of custom theme development services.
Advantage of hiring a WordPress developer
If you want to develop a website for generating revenue, you obviously have to spend a little in development to make it interactive and user-friendly. For developing such types of features, you need to hire dedicated WordPress developers who are experienced in this area.
An experienced WordPress developer will have extensive knowledge in various areas such as SQL, XML, Javascript and much more. All of these help developers to create quality websites. This is why it is essential to hire experienced dedicated WordPress developers as they can design state-of-the-art websites that will maximize visibility. Some of the advantages of hiring a dedicated WordPress developer are:
- Amazing technical support
- Reliable solutions to all the problems relating to WordPress
- 100% customization
- Delivery of high-quality work in less time
Wrapping up facts and myths about WordPress
WordPress is a simple and amazing tool. It can be used to build simple solutions or complicated ones.
Above all, search engines like Google love WordPress websites as they update frequently and have well-structured content. When compared to static websites, with WordPress the chances of getting a good search engine ranking is high. In fact, Google has even gone on record recommending WordPress for businesses.
Your website is a vital part of your online presence. Whether you want to create a new website or considering a website revamp, give WordPress a shot.
If you’d like to know how WordPress websites can help you reach the target audience and used for better online communicate, drop us a line. We ColorWhistle are happy to help you!
