Celebrating 20 Years of WordPress

This Saturday, May 27th, marks the 20th anniversary of WordPress. From its humble beginnings to its meteoric rise, WordPress has become a cornerstone of the internet, powering millions of websites and empowering individuals and businesses worldwide. Join us as we dive into the world of WordPress with these 20 fascinating facts:

1. WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Little did they know the impact it would have on the digital landscape.

2. Powering almost half of the web, WordPress commands a staggering 43% of all websites.

3. WordPress is used by 14.7% of the world's top 100 websites, including many Fortune 500 companies.

4. Remarkably, 62% of the top 100 fastest-growing companies in the US rely on WordPress to power their online presence.

5. WordPress registers 1.1 million new domains every six months and powers over 2 million new websites annually.

6. WordPress receives over 163 million unique visitors each month, surpassing Twitter's 156 million visitor count.

7. On WordPress, users create 27 new posts each second, resulting in over 8.5 billion posts per year!

8. WordPress is available in over 200 languages, making it a truly global platform.

9. In 2018, WordPress introduced the Gutenberg block editor, revolutionizing content creation for web teams and enhancing the user experience.

10. WordPress prioritizes security, ensuring regular updates and maintaining a dedicated security team to address vulnerabilities promptly.

11. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and contributors to WordPress knew they were starting a movement to democratize publishing and firmly believed “code is poetry,” and one should “learn JavaScript deeply.”

12. WordPress originated as a fork of b2/cafelog blogging software. Its connection to b2 was made tribute to in the P2 theme,?the first theme to put the post editor on the front of the site allowing users to collaborate and chat with each other.

13. mu-plugins are referred to as “must use,” but this is a “backronym” from the original meaning, which was “multi-user,” referring to the original intent of WordPress multisite.

14. WordPress has been naming releases after jazz musicians since 1.0 in 2004, beginning with Miles Davis.

15. Kubrick was the WordPress default theme from 2005 to 2010, when WordPress started shipping new default themes (roughly) every year, starting with Twenty Ten.

16. WordPress.com was launched and opened to the public also in 2005, allowing anyone to create a free site (using a *.wordpress.com subdomain) without having to secure hosting or perform the "famous 5-minute install."

17. WordPress multisite is a built-in feature of WordPress that came from a fork called WordPress Mμ. It was initially designed to support blog networks like WordPress.com and Blogger.

18. When WP 3.0 was released, there was a controversial function capital_P_dangit that automatically capitalizes the P in WordPress, which broke URLs and caused a lot of rage in the community at that time.

19. The WordPress Logo Is Not an Original Design: It is based on an existing font called "Mrs Eaves."

20. WordPress has a default plugin called "Hello Dolly," that displays random lyrics from the song "Hello, Dolly!" in the admin dashboard. While not essential, it serves as a lighthearted Easter egg for developers.

21. BONUS: At Pantheon, we are WordPress super fans and have been since the very beginning. We are proud to be part of the WordPress family and equally proud to be the fastest platform for WordPress.