Wiredelta

7 Mind Blowing Facts About WordPress

Unless you just started using the internet, you probably know about WordPress. Especially if you made a site or blog. In fact, our website is powered by this Content Management System (CMS). WordPress, despite having ‘word’ in its name, is much more than just blogging or making websites on the internet. So, read on and find out some things you didn’t know about WordPress, one of the world’s favourite CMS platforms.  

 

1. WordPress may be easy to use but was not easy to build

When you add up the development hours spent building this content management system (CMS), it equates to about 112 years. One remarkable thing regarding WordPress, it is based on 423,759 lines of code, which of course has been thoroughly tested and configured. As a result of all this hard work, WordPress is the most user-friendly, out of the box version website builder, today.

 

As a result of all the hard work of the WordPress community, the CMS offers some very useful features. So, whether you are an expert content writer or just getting started, WordPress is there for you. Its no wonder then that WordPress is such a diverse platform, offering features such as:  

 

Quality editing tools everyone can use

WordPress offers users a very intuitive and user-friendly interface that makes editing content easy. It includes typical features found on CMS platforms such as a readability analysis, to help editors present their content in a way that is easy to understand.

 

Media management

Once you upload an image, video or other media to WordPress, it stays in there. This is quite handy for reusing images such as logos that are employed daily. Also, it can help you track what media you have utilised before.

 

User management

In many instances, there may be more than one person managing the website and each of them has different roles. An important thing about WordPress, it allows you to define access levels accordingly, giving you full control over your platform.

 

Built in the comment section

If applicable, for instance in a blog, subscribers and others can engage with a built-in comment section. This is easy to manage and allows users to interact with you and your page. It also allows you to format this into a forum and moderate content in the comment section.

 

Thousands of easy to use themes

WordPress by default, comes with 3 themes, to make editing your blog or website easier.  However, there is an ever-expanding catalogue of themes, constantly being created. If upon the thousands of themes you can’t find something suitable, its also possible to create and upload your own.

 

Plugin compatibility

WordPress supports thousands of plugins. These allow creators to add in even more features to their pages. Some make editing for the creator much easier, while others are designed to benefit end users.

Following its open source nature, WordPress allows users to write their own plugins too. There are thousands of plugins that can be used for endless possibilities.

 

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

As typical for CMS platforms, WordPress offers users the ability to make their pages more SEO friendly. This helps your pages be favourite by search engines like Google and come up earlier in search results.

 

 

Also WordPress can host pages such as blogs on its own servers. However, pages can be exported to other hosting domains. If a user is having trouble with their host or just simply fancy a change, WordPress can allow you to import and export pages. This means your work is kept safe and giving you flexibility regarding hosting.

 

2. WordPress accounts for 27% of internet pages

As mentioned, WordPress is adaptable for all kind of creators and content. While all the creators who publish on WordPress use various style and content, WordPress’s editing platform encourages users to create high-quality pages, that will do well with SEO and be attractive to end users.

 

More than172 million websites are online, and at around 75 Million are WordPress created. Additionally, around 20% of all self-hosted websites are WordPress based. Clearly, they are doing something right.

 

The platform is attractive not only for those who want to publish blogs and websites easily but also those looking for more advanced developer features. It offers the ability to add your own application framework and edit customer content types. Furthermore, developers can make their own plugins and additionally add custom content. Clearly, WordPress is adaptable to almost all creators from hobby bloggers to multinational firms and everyone in between. WordPress really has it all. A cool thing about WordPress, it emphasises this sense of community. It operates forums to allow users to guide each other and even has a real life ‘Word Camp’ conferences that it operates across the world.

3. WordPress is in 50+ Languages. Content is Published in Over 120 Different Languages

One of the most notable things about WordPress is the fact its available in so many languages. The current version of WordPress (4.7) is available in 52 languages, which includes the dozen that make up the most spoken languages worldwide: Chinese, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, Urdu, Russian, Bengali, German, and Japanese.

 

WordPress can provide translation for websites into other languages, in a way that is easy to use. At the moment, the English language version of WordPress leads the list with over 70 percent of sites. Next is Spanish at almost 5 percent and Portuguese at just over 2 percent.

 

The smart thing about WordPress is by offering its platform in some many languages, it has an advantage in emerging markets. Three times as many internet users will live in emerging markets by 2022, when compared to developed markets, according to forecasts made by the Boston Consultant Group, in September 2018.

 

WordPress inclusivity does not just accommodate to people from all different linguistic and technical backgrounds but also people differently abled. They provide many themes to allow creators to add assessability features on their content. While it’s ultimately up to the creator to employ these, its a positive step forward in making the internet more user-friendly for users with disabilities.

 

4. WordPress accounts for a quarter of the worlds top 100 Websites

WordPress users include well-known blogs like TechCrunch, media outlets like CNN and The New Yorker. It also represents huge franchises The Offical Starwars Blog. Top charting artists like Jay Zee and Katy Perry also avail of WordPress. However, most surprisingly about WordPress is the official website of Sweden is using the platform.

 

It really is a testament to the platform to have so many influential and powerful users.  WordPress is also popular with small but growing companies like us here at Wiredelta® and is a key mechanism in helping us produce quality blog posts.

 

5. WordPress has more than 55,000 plugins

As discussed, the range of plugins, which can be made by developers, are a key part of the WordPress product. While WordPress on its own is a great product, the range of plugins really helps it stand out.

 

They host over 55,000 plugins for free which offer a range of functionality including; online booking system, e-commerce modules, social media components as well as tools to make editing easier. These plugins have been downloaded over 1 and a half billion times. This only accounts for plugins downloaded through WordPress. In addition, there are thousands of third-party plugins are available either for free or purchase, that can be acquired elsewhere.

 

 

Experienced users and developers warn about WordPress plugins. Using too many plugins can cause issues. In his article for UpWork, experienced WordPress creator and developer, Miljan Bivolarevic explains more about this issue. He highlights that the use of too many plugins can result in websites becoming slow and crash. Plugins also add to the risk of users facing security issues. However, Themeisle which is one of the third party companies that source themes for WordPress, claims that during a test they carried out, WordPress does not get much slower with add ons.

 

6. Sick of spambots, there is a solution

Recently, on our DailyW blog, we published an article about the plague of robocalls and how 2019 is the year this may be finally curtailed. A much worse problem is the seemingly endless amount of spambots, that flood comment sections. One of the best things about WordPress, it’s possible to use plugins such as Akismet, if you have a comment section, to curtail spam.

 

These plugins work by filtering your comment section just as your email client does. They look for spambots and other problematic comments. The utilised data collected by users and put it all together to block known spambots and learn to recognise new ones. For instance, Akismet used this data which has helped them prevent 23 billion brute force attacks in 2016.

 

7. Over 117 Billion words were published through WordPress in 2016

One hundred seventeen billion, nine hundred thirty-nine million, one hundred forty-eight thousand, three hundred fifty-seven, to be exact. Even just saying that is a mouthful and it has no doubt increased since that year. However, what is remarkable about WordPress and its community, it includes everyone from hobby bloggers to big corporations. WordPress really is what you make of it. It can be as simple or complex as you wish. Of course, something free and open source runs the risk of issues arising.

 

Conclusion

Overall, WordPress really does work towards its mission statement:  “The freedom to build. The freedom to change. The freedom to share”. WordPress got this right by focusing as much on making it a great place for developers to experiment as they did to make it user-friendly.

 

If you rather let someone else take care of your WordPress project, Wiredelta® is here to help. We can help you design everything blogs to a full WordPress based website. Contact us to find out more and don’t forget to follow us on social media to find out more interesting developments in the world of tech.  

 

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