WordPress is currently claiming 24% of the total number of websites in the internet. Considering the scale of the internet, this is almost a quarter of the entire sites online and it’s indeed a very huge number. But when it is claimed that WordPress powers 24% of the total websites, what are the actual figures and how were they arrived at? Just how big is this platform? This is what we try to demystify in this article.
About the 24%
The figure 24% comes from W3Tech’s analysis of all the websites they monitor which uses content management system. It is important to point out at this juncture that not all the websites in the internet use content management systems. As a matter of fact, the majority doesn’t and only 41.3% are powered by CMS. It therefore implies if only CMS based websites are considered, WordPress powers more than half.
WordPress and Joomla
Other than WordPress, Joomla is the next most popular CMS. According to the metrics by W3Techs, Joomla accounts for a paltry 2.8% of the total websites powered by CMS. Though this is significant when considering the actual numbers, it looks like a dwarf in comparison to the 24% by WordPress.
Only the Top Ten Million Sites Are Considered
While computing the popularity of WordPress websites in the internet, not all the websites are taken into consideration. The figures by W3Techs consider only the top ten million websites ranked by Alexa. This is simply to say that the figures are actually not a complete reflection but rather indicative of what is going on. They could be high or low depending on the number of websites that don’t appear among the top ten million in Alexa.
Who Is and Who Isn’t Using WordPress
Just like the other content management systems, WordPress is used across multiple websites and industries. Drupal leads when it comes to high traffic sites with WordPress following closely behind.
With regards to rankings, media organizations tend to use WordPress than any other content management system. WordPress offers excellent features for publishing different kinds of content and it also allows for distributors and editors to work independently and harmoniously. It makes it easy for such media organization to get good quality content from contributors without necessarily the need to have a full-paid writing and editorial staff. A prime example of a giant media organization that uses WordPress is the Guardian Newspaper.
Other than the giant media organizations, there is a plethora of self hosted WordPress sites used for a number of reasons such as creating web pages and blogs. It should be remembered that the genesis of WordPress was a blogging platform and though it’s now a fully fledged CMS, a lot of blogging is still being done within the platform.
For relatively simple sites, WordPress fits like a glove due to its core features such as intuitive user interface, excellent content management, easy file and image integration, search engine friendliness, and of course it’s a free platform.
How Else Can You Use WordPress?
As time goes by, the capabilities of WordPress keeps on expanding. With its strengths and compatibility with different plugins, the platform can be extended to create forums, ecommerce websites and social networks. All these might soon be achieved without the use of any plugin or any form of extension to the platform.
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