The Phenomenal Growth of WordPress

25.07.2011 // Front Page // jansen

Boing Boing, the world famous “interesting links site,” have just updated their website CMS (content management system) to WordPress.  Boing Boing started life as a magazine in 1988 and made it’sbut as a website in 1995.  In 2000, the site was redesigned after one of the founders discovered the Blogger software. A further redesign in 2007 saw the introduction of comments to the site and now WordPress has become the platform of choice.

WordPress was first release by Matt Mullenweg  in 2003 as a simple blogging tool, it has now become one of the most popular Content Management Systems in the world – according to Alexa, WordPress powers around 14% of the world’s top 1 million websites.

Why WordPress?

There are many factors that have contributed to the success of WordPress.

• The system is open source, meaning developers can write additional programs to enhance the system’s core functionality.
• The interface has been designed with non-technical people in mind, so it’s easy for anyone to learn how to update and maintain their own website.
• The software is scalable – you can use it to power a simple blog or with some customisation, WordPress can power a corporate website,  an e-commerce shop, a portfolio for a photographer or an estate agent’s website with full property listing functionality and so on.
• There’s free templates available to download and although knowledge of  HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP is necessary to build a bespoke design from scratch, once the theme is built or installed, users will only have to concern themselves with the content of the site and the layout of pages.
• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – The structure of WordPress is very search engine friendly and with a few enhancements, you can optimise your website to achieve great search engine results.

Who is using it?

The site you are reading right now is proudly powered by WordPress and below are links to some well known brands with sites and blogs built on it.

WordPress Development..

I have been developing sites using WordPress for over 4 years and have seen this popular blogging engine develop into “The Facebook of Content Management Systems!!” - or just a rather neat, open source platform that meets the needs of burgeoning businesses in the 21st century.

If you are interested in what WordPress could do for your site, you can get in touch at the contact page – we love new ideas.

I am based on the East Coast of Essex but I get to work all over the world from here!