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WordPress Now Powers Over One-Third of the Top 10 Million Sites on the Web (wordpress.org)

WordPress now powers over 1/3rd of the top 10 million sites on the web, according to W3Techs. From a blog post: Our market share has been growing steadily over the last few years, going from 29.9% just one year ago to 33.4% now. We are, of course, quite proud of these numbers! The path here has been very exciting. In 2005, we were celebrating 50,000 downloads. Six years later, in January 2011, WordPress was powering 13.1% of websites. And now, early in 2019, we are powering 33.4% of sites. Our latest release has already been downloaded close to 14 million times, and it was only released on the 21st of February.

35 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Removing years from our collective lives by JoeyRox · · Score: 3, Informative

    One 5-second page load at a time.

    1. Re:Removing years from our collective lives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      One 5-second page load at a time.

      My wordpress page loads almost instantly. Of course, I'm not stupid enough to be running 50 plugins.

    2. Re:Removing years from our collective lives by WankerWeasel · · Score: 1

      Agreed. The 5 second load times come from people using bargain hosting like Hostgator with servers shared with thousands of other sites, they're loaded with every plugin in the world, running old versions of PHP, and numerous other failures to optimize. Yes, it happens frequently because WordPress is so easy to use that anyone can use it (and that's why it's great). But for those that know what they're doing and optimize properly, they can have very high performing sites.

    3. Re:Removing years from our collective lives by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      I used to use a shared hosting environment (years and years ago). However, I ran into the unspoken rule of Shared Hosting: "Your site/content better not get too popular." The host has thousands of sites on a single server. As long as those thousand sites each gets a tiny amount of traffic (and most do), this is fine. modern servers can handle a thousand "hundred hits a month is a lot" sites with no problem. When one site becomes too popular, though, it starts to drain resources from the other sites and throws off the host's business model. So you can find your account suspended for too much traffic with the host pushing you to a more expensive dedicated server plan. (Likely with too much power and way too expensive for your site's needs.)

      I now have a virtual private server. It's much less expensive than a dedicated server, but doesn't run into the shared server's issue with "my neighbor is really popular/ran an infinite loop in their code/was hacked and now the entire server is slowing down."

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  2. Re:And it's crap. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Still better then what the bosses Nephew who knows HTML can generate.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Bold and the brave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    How anyone can run Wordpress and sleep at night is beyond my ability to comprehend. Must either be really brave or really really really stupid.

    1. Re:Bold and the brave by DickBreath · · Score: 2

      Ignorance is bliss.

      Actually it only SEEMS like bliss. But the feeling is the same.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    2. Re:Bold and the brave by wyattstorch516 · · Score: 1

      They usually don't sleep much at night. They usually are taking naps waiting for their pages to load.

    3. Re:Bold and the brave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      25 years. That's how long I've been a web developer. I know more coding languages than you can name off. I've worked on just about every type of server on the market. I've worked on sites with millions of users everyday. WordPress is just a tool. Like all tools it's dangerous in the wrong hands and sometimes even in the right hands.. Anyone can swing a hammer, but I've seen more than one person (some who knew what they were doing) wack themselves on the thumb. If you're scared to run WordPress because you think it's an insecure nightmare that will only cause problems then I would venture to bet that you don't have enough experience to not be confident in your abilities to overcome any problem. Most of the time I don't have a clue what I'm doing, anyone in this industry who says otherwise is either lying or full of shit. The key is having the knowledge to know what to do when a problem occurs and no matter what system you use there will someday be a problem. Problems are a part of life, if you can't overcome them or are scare of them then that's your problem. Me personally, I'll work on anything and I'll be damned if I'm gonna cower in the corner and shake my boots like an uneducated coward. So no, I'm not stupid and I'm not brave, I'm just not an unskilled wannabe.

  4. It's amazing. by Qbertino · · Score: 4, Informative

    I do WordPress development and Consulting for a living. Quite a good living. This piece of software is utterly amazing. Built by people who obviously didn't have the faintest idea about how to build a proper web application it's become the perpetual source of things to fix and work to do.

    Absolutely amazing.

    Just this week a huge installation running WP and WooCommerce, bloated by idiots who added 40+ plugins to this mission critical (!!) setup finally exploded into the face of my employer who wouldn't listen for over a year I've been warning him.

    You can do amazing stuff with WordPress, but only if you know how to work around it's pitfalls and do most of the things not using WordPress utilities or the abysmally broken WP DB model. I will continue to do so because there's simply no end to jobs right now but you need good humor to deal with the daily crazy.

    Truly amazing.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:It's amazing. by Dracos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Have you read the WordPress code? I have, it's a steaming pile of spaghetti sauced with all the bad practices. For 15 years it's been the poster child for writing PHP badly.

    2. Re:It's amazing. by higuita · · Score: 1

      man,been there, done that!!

      i have spend the last few day with the exact same problem, WP, woocommerce, userpro and other 30 plugins... a hunt to find what was the plugin that broke authentication... but doing live and forcing the default theme, as disabling some plugins broke the site, as some idiot decided to edit the main theme to add some code and explodes when some plugins are disabled... and it isn't even my job, but it is better for me to help then than to find 20 wordpress installs, with ancient versions and security problems, full of spam and a generic "admin" account, used by everyone. Sadly it is better for me to monitor and control the installs than ignore it and later faces with total chaos

      --
      Higuita
    3. Re:It's amazing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I personally maintain a PHP code base that is even worse than Wordpress. And yep, that keeps me busy too.

  5. Re:And it's crap. by DickBreath · · Score: 2

    Wordpress may be crap. And it may have a history littered with security problems.

    But it makes up for it by having LOTS of users! You can't argue with success. The more sites that use Wordpress, the less security vulnerabilities will matter. Because . .. . um . . . some reason or other.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  6. Re:From the sad-but-true department by DickBreath · · Score: 1

    That statement implies that there is some that he WILL eat. That would be the remaining portion after you exclude the "some that he will not eat" portion.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  7. Re:And it's crap. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The main point, is most websites want to be done on the CHEAP. Hiring skilled people to actually make a solid web site, even for just a public bill board, contact list, and open positions page, can cost a lot of money to be done right. Too much for most companies, so they will find a way to do it for cheap. Wordpress has name recognition, and most site can be made to look presentable without those expensive people who know what they are doing.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  8. Re:And it's crap. by Joce640k · · Score: 2

    Have they made it work with sqlite yet?

    If not, it's dead to me.

    Also... that whole blogging and user signup thing. Who needs that sort of baggage for a basic website? It could run a whole lot faster/better without it.

    --
    No sig today...
  9. A turd responsible for over 1/3rd... by Ecuador · · Score: 2

    A turd responsible for over 1/3rd if the top sites... brilliant.
    I wanted to make a blog at some point and was told that Wordpress is the most popular thing out there by far, so it would be easy to support, 1-click installed by my host etc. I didn't give it another thought, I mean, how bad could it be?
    So it took me a while to realize just how bad and how slow it is exactly. It was clearly developed by people who had no idea about... well anything, really. Mindboggling how it caught on so much.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:A turd responsible for over 1/3rd... by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      The worst software tends to be the most successful...

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    2. Re:A turd responsible for over 1/3rd... by MikeDataLink · · Score: 1

      The worst software tends to be the most successful...

      No, the software that's most successful is the one that makes something simpler for the masses. People seem to think great technology wins. It never does. Solving problems wins.

      Hint: We could learn from our own evolution. The changes that make you more likely to reproduce are what win. Not necessarily things we think should win (intelligence for example). In fact, stupid people are far more likely to have a baby than smart ones.

      --
      Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
    3. Re:A turd responsible for over 1/3rd... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      Try one of the static site generators, like Hugo.

      Soooo much nicer. It works the way you expect as a real coder too: you write your stuff, compile it, debug, then upload.

    4. Re:A turd responsible for over 1/3rd... by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Easy, greedy people who know nothing about programming and see the internet as one giant get rich quick scheme. Hire the cheapest programmers they can find and quite often try to cheat them and run the cheapest software and hardware they can and voila, a cheap nasty wordpress internet. Greed and ignorance made it happen and of course wordpress sites tend to disappear as rapidly as they appear, it is spreading globally though and hence, for the time being makes up losses. Probably using wordpress would be a pretty solid indicator of a lack of professionalism and long term reliability (based upon the performance of the sites that disappear).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  10. Re:TIL: We still use wordpress by higuita · · Score: 1

    perl is amazing... as long you don't need to change anything! :D

    --
    Higuita
  11. Re:And it's crap. by art123 · · Score: 1

    That says that "done is better than perfect" and that the technically superior solution doesn't always win out over first-mover-advantage, good marketing, good developer ecosystem. I use Wordpress for a few sites and although I am not a super PHP fan, Wordpress serves me fine.

  12. Re:TIL: We still use wordpress by DickBreath · · Score: 1

    When looking at Perl, I almost expect to see . . .

    NO CARRIER

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  13. Try Banshee by Aethedor · · Score: 1

    Banshee was built to be secure. And because complexity is the enemy, it's small and easy. That led to a very fast framework. But despite of being small, it has many features, like weblog, a forum, newsletter, photo album and basic webshop functionality and libraries for databases, e-mail, HTTP, logfiles, etc. Worth giving it a shot.

    --
    It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
  14. Re:TIL: We still use wordpress by supremebob · · Score: 2

    Most people use three year old Android phones filled with carrier bloatware as well. Just because it's popular, doesn't mean that it's good.

  15. Drupal went enterprise, left WP the market... by bjdevil66 · · Score: 1

    The leadership of Drupal - Wordpress's only real competition a decade ago - decided to grow up and cater to real programmers and the corporate/enterprise clients of Acquia (the Drupal creator's company). His decision to go all-in with OOP left average Drupal users - web "coders" that are not classically trained and didn't need or want the higher level of difficulty (and development costs) just to get the same results in their use case - hanging in the wind.

    That has left upwards of a million legacy Drupal 6 and 7 sites that don't have the resources to go to a heavier OOP platform like Drupal 8 hanging in the wind. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of them will become Wordpress sites simply because it will be "good enough".

    In the meantime, Wordpress continues to have more features bolted onto it by a growing community that has less technical expertise per capita than other CMSes. Being a Wordpress "expert" means you can 1) use SFTP and set up a webhosting account, 2) read some intelligently written documentation (unlike Drupal for most of its existence), and 3) hack together some PHP via Google search + stackexchange snippets (that you don't really understand enough to work - regardless of security or supportability). It also means you're a dime a dozen - and won't get paid very much unless you're really good at it (or you manage other WP devs).

    1. Re:Drupal went enterprise, left WP the market... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      OOP isn't what bothers me about Drupal, it's that it still has the same old problem that installing a module can completely break your install to the point that you have to go in manually and not just remove the module, but also tell Drupal that you've done it before you can use it again. There has to be SOME way to avoid that! I'm not talking about obscure modules, either, but stuff with many many installs. My D7 to D8 migration attempt resulted in a site that doesn't show body copy. WTF?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Drupal went enterprise, left WP the market... by bjdevil66 · · Score: 1

      OOP isn't what bothers me about Drupal, it's that it still has the same old problem that installing a module can completely break your install to the point that you have to go in manually and not just remove the module, but also tell Drupal that you've done it before you can use it again.

      I can't speak to D8, but those hard, WSOD PHP fails do happen in D7 on occasion because some contrib modules just aren't written well (no try/catch backstops in them, etc.), and they're not well tested anymore because of the ignored community.

      On the D7 -> D8 migrations, more often than not the D7 site has JUST enough customization/hacking done outside the "Drupal way" of doing things to go from a 100% successful migration to a 98% correct in the DB but be a complete, "WTF, Where's my content?", mess that can require an in-depth understanding of D8 to debug.

      Because of that, unless you're talking about a major website that can't be "just rebuilt" (or you don't have a Migrate API expert available to you), a majority of web site users should just do some kind of complete, manual rebuild.

      And that timeframe is about when the market is going to make or break Backdrop CMS. If people aren't more thoroughly told about Backdrop by the Drupal community before late 2021 (when D7 goes out of support), the overwhelming majority of those remaining Drupal 6-7 sites are either going to go on unpatched and eventually die - or they will be ported to WordPress.

      The transition to OOP (at the behest of Dries B. - who knew he was taking a huge risk but ultimately went with enterprise clients over the community leeches and public entities) stabbed Drupal through the heart 6-7 years ago and never pulled out the blade - letting it die slowly over a decade vs. dying right away.

    3. Re:Drupal went enterprise, left WP the market... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      On the D7 -> D8 migrations, more often than not the D7 site has JUST enough customization/hacking done outside the "Drupal way" of doing things to go from a 100% successful migration to a 98% correct in the DB but be a complete, "WTF, Where's my content?", mess that can require an in-depth understanding of D8 to debug.

      My website customization is done literally 100% the Drupal way. My theme is customized only for cosmetics. Everything else was done in views, etc. Yet the migration still resulted in a site that did not show body copy. I'm deeply disappointed, and probably will just go to Backdrop. There's some time between now and the deadline, though, so maybe they'll get migrate working correctly. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  16. BTW - Try Backdrop CMS before Wordpress by bjdevil66 · · Score: 2

    The sad part for the slowly rotting community of mostly non-OOP Drupal experts/coders/architects is that Backdrop CMS - a fork of Drupal 7 from around 5-6 years ago - was the right path forward for them. The fork's creators have simplified Drupal back to where it was when it was gaining in popularity (Drupal 5-6 era) and was simpler to work with, all while continuing to add new features and keep its core strengths that made it a better CMS tool to use than Wordpress for all but the simplest of blog sites.

    Backdrop CMS was supposed to take Drupal's old place in the small-to-medium website market, while the current OOP-based Drupal v8+ moved onto enterprise-level clients. That hasn't happened, however, because it gets zero marketing from the remaining stalwards in the Drupal community that have become too invested in the Drupal brand to see the writing on the wall:

    (1) OOP-based Drupal (v8+) will never be accepted as a real option for small-to-medium websites when WordPress is cheaper and faster in most cases.
    (2) Despite its change to OOP, Drupal 8+ talent is still too hard to find to warrant an enterprise-level investment - espeically when other more well-known framework options (with big money behind them) are out there.
    (3) Unless you work for Acquia or have some other enterprise-level client(s) with already deep Drupal roots, the Drupal job market is winding down fast - and when everyone's transitioned out of Drupal 5-7, it's over. Adapt or die.

    Backdrop will hopefully not serve as another reminder that the winners in free markets are usually the products with the best marketing and lowest total cost of ownership (the "good enough" choice) - not the one with the best reliability, build quality, or number of features.

  17. Re:And it's crap. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    The main point, is most websites want to be done on the CHEAP.

    Thats the fudamental point lots of people are missing here. Lots of people complaining about IDIOTS, but those "idiots" made the sound decision to go for a cheap website when they were small and spend the savings on growing the business. That's how they're now big enough to pay for the expensive whiners to get them out of a hole.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  18. Wordpress is a mess, but... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    Wordpress is a mess, but there are a few plugins that can drastically reduce the attack surface and the likelihood of an attacker making any headway.

    I'd recommend Wordfence and Block Bad Queries, to name just a couple. I wouldn't run a WP site without at least these two plugins, period. There are also some decent guides to hardening a WP site and they're well worth the time to look at.

    And to address the inevitable screaming that will occur regarding WP and its mess of spaghetti code, I agree 100% that you shouldn't have to add these plugins just to keep a WP installation safe, but it is what it is.

    And FWIW, I have no connection to either of these plugins or to Wordpress itself. I don't generally like using WP but sometimes when all you need is a quick site without any fancy crap, it's okay.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  19. Re: And it's crap. by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    Itâ(TM)s possible via some hack jobs, but the plugins are all questionable if the will continue to work.

    Yep. Unless you can try all possible code paths then you never know how/when it might fail.

    I heard they use PDO in wordpress now but that doesn't mean they're not sending MySQL-specific commands.

    --
    No sig today...