In the video above I talk about the state of WordPress and its popularity in 2016 check it out.
Recently a question came up on a very popular social media website called Quora, the question was about WordPress and why is it declining in recent years.
A chart was shown that demonstrated the fact that interest in WordPress peaked in 2014 but then started to decline in the following years. So I decided to investigate the matter and look deeper into the state of WordPress in 2016.
First I went to Google trends and did a search for WordPress and it did indeed show that interest peaked in 2014 but then started to decline over the next two years. I found this interesting considering the fact that WordPress powers anywhere between 25 to 30% of the modern web.
So I decided to do a little comparison and I did a search for Apple and what did I find? Interest in Apple increased and decreased at various points throughout the year and throughout the past 10 years so this made me think about how even large companies can see dramatic upticks and downturns in public interest.
I then decided to research another topic about a game that recently came out named Pokémon go. And even though this game just came out within the past month Google trends showed that evens in recent days interest peaked and then went down.
So how accurate are these charts I asked myself. I then decided to research on other websites to see what the popularity of WordPress really is. What I found is that out of all content management systems a.k.a. CMS’s, WordPress has 59% of the CMS market. This also means that if you add up the entire competition in the CMS market combined they do not add up to the market share that WordPress has.
WordPress powers some of the largest websites from universities to large nonprofits to some very popular e-commerce based websites. On top of that WordPress is used by some very large media companies and every day bloggers.
How did WordPress become such a dominant force within the website market? If you look back to when WordPress started it was a simple blogging system. But over the years it grew significantly because it was so simple to use and easy for developers to create extensions which are known as plugins and the base of users dramatically increased to the point where WordPress has become the go to solution for those looking to have a highly functional visually appealing website.
What separates WordPress from the rest of the solutions out there?
WordPress is an open source platform where a website owner can actually own their website versus renting a website from another service. While there are third-party hosted solutions available, people have shown that they prefer to own their website. With WordPress, you download the software install it on your Web server and since it’s built with PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and MySQL, you get the opportunity to have complete control over your website.
The hosted solutions only allow you to create content and use only the templates and features that they provide. This limitation is why most people have decided to choose WordPress to power their website. There are no limitations when it comes to the design and the functionality of the website powered by WordPress.
It seems as though WordPress continues on its path of gaining market share. What other solutions are there that are open source and allow you to own your website? There are two others that come to mind, Drupal and Joomla!
These two content management systems are very similar to WordPress in the sense that they allow you to own your website, they are coded in the same coding languages as WordPress, and they hold the position of number two and number three when it comes to websites powered by a CMS.
The take away
WordPress is not in decline and interest continues to increase. As a WordPress developer this information motivates me to continue creating websites for my clients using the number one content management system in the world.
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