Did you know that WordPress is 15 years old? The initial release was launched on the 27^th May 2003. Yes, it’s a teenager, and we love it!

Like any teen, WordPress has been through a lot already, but there is also a lot to be amazed at.

Let’s crunch some numbers…

Did you know that WordPress powers 26% of the web? That means that there is a LOT of sites out there using it as a content management system. In fact, 59% of content management systems (CMS) are WordPress based. The next in that list is Joomla with just 6% of the share.

If those numbers are not enough over 1.1million, yes 1.1 MILLION domains are registered every six months where WordPress is being used to power the website behind the domain. That’s a lot of web development hours for sure!

WordPress employs less than 500 people to do all the amazing things it does. Luckily for us in Manchester, Mike Little (the co-founder) lives not too far away!

So why do we use it?

Well, it’s pretty easy to use. It’s taken me (Sarah) just 6 months to get to grips with builds; and whilst I have an IT background (and has dabbled with WordPress before), it’s easy for most people to pick up.

You can make a site which is really simple, up to something which can handle large volumes of sales with WooCommerce.

Speaking of Woo, there are so many plugins, you’ll never be short of extra functionality to give you something which is super unique to you. There are over 44,000 plugins. That is a massive amount of flexibility!

Is there a downside?

Well, even things you love have some bits you don’t like!

A lot of people say that WordPress is easy to hack; but that really depends on how you secure it! A house can be easy to burgle if you leave the door open, can’t it?

WordPress sites do get subjected to hack attempts; but if you use one (or more) of the widely available security plugins, then that makes the task just that little bit harder for the bots!

A lot of the time, security of any website just means employing some common sense. Strong passwords, not obvious admin usernames, and keeping up to date on the much dreaded updates are key.

With so many plugin options, and developers developing; there is always likely to be some conflict. But, given the scope of plugins out there, you can usually work around anything which causes an issue.

Yeh, but we love it!

All in all, we love working with WordPress. Of course, we work with other platforms just as Magento and Squarespace to name just two; but you can’t beat WordPress for ease of use and development!

Happy birthday WordPress, we can’t wait to see what Gutenberg holds!

Looking to develop your site further and need some help? Please get in touch for a chat…