28 Things You Should Know Before Using WordPress

Non-profits and small businesses need to make smart financial decisions. This starts with your website. A from-scratch website can cost thousands of dollars and can take dozens of hours to build. You’re much better off having your designer work from a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla!, or Magento.

And with so many blogs and websites using content management systems for web publishing, the market for free content management systems is constantly growing and improving. The popular open-source blogging platform WordPress is the leader in this market as it currently holds 59.3% of market share. If you’re considering using WordPress, read along to find out more about what it is that makes the number one content management system in the world so wildly popular.

Popularity of WordPress in Numbers

Did you know that if you type  “WordPress” into a Google browser there will be 1.6 billion results? Available data tells us that WordPress users write 69.8 million new posts in every month and more than 543 million words every day. WordPress is the number one content management system in the world and its popularity is steadily increasing each year. In July 2013 there were 11.2 billion page views across blogs on WordPress. The following year page views grew to 15.8 billion and in 2015 there were 19.8 billion page views. This year the number of page views reached 22.2 billion. This means that page views almost doubled in just three years.

Top Themes and Plugins on WordPress

WordPress offers thousands of free themes and plugins. Themes control the overall look and feel of your website. Plugins offer new functions to your website, such as enabling you to make custom buttons or telling you if you have broken links.

The most popular free plugins are Regenerate Thumbnail, Akismet, Woo Commerce, Yoast SEO and Hello Dolly. The top free themes include Responsive, Customizr, Zerif Lite, Vantage and Hueman. As for the best-sellers, the most popular premium plugins are Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, LayerSlider, Ultimate Addons and UberMenu. The best-selling themes on WordPress are Avada, X the Theme, Enfold, Betheme, and Bridge.

Celebrities and WordPress

The websites of some of the most famous people in the world are powered by none other than WordPress. Top celebrities that use WordPress include rapper Jay-Z, English comedian Russell Brand, legendary singer Sir Tom Jones, former NBA player Kobe Bryant and actor Sylvester Stallone.

OMG, People Got Hacked?

If you’re considering using WordPress, you should know that like all open source website platforms, security can be an issue. Automattic, the company behind WordPress has worked hard to ensure it’s as secure as possible, but despite this, several well-known breaches have occurred. The best thing you can do to ensure your WordPress website is secure is to use a secure password, such as the ones suggested by WordPress when you first set up your site.

The WordPress Infographic

To give you a full picture of the impact of WordPress on the world of web design, the infographic below contains 28 little-known facts about WordPress. All the information in the infographic is based on relevant data and the latest research results obtained from credible sources.

Need Help With WordPress or Web Design?

This is a guest post from Colin Cieloha. Colin is the North American Territory Manager for Skilled.co, a ranked database of digital firms available for hire. He is also an avid snowboarding enthusiast and world traveler.