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WordPress Statistics 2019: Growth, Development, Global Usage, Blogs, Themes and Extensions

Anne Laing
  1. WordPress Popularity in Numbers
  2. WordPress Security Issues: Outdated Versions, Plugins, and Themes
  3. Conclusion

Going back in 2001, when Michel Valdrighi had been working on the b2/cafelog, – the forerunner of WordPress 0.5 – no one could imagine that it would become the most popular content management system in 18 years. Nowadays, with more than 75 million users, it runs 32.5% of all websites and provides domain names for approximately 43,1% of all websites in the world.

In 2018, WordPress officially celebrated its 15th anniversary. Analyzing its annual progress, we gathered amusing statistics confirming its leadership position.

So, if you want to know why this giant is so popular globally, just check out this self-exploring statistic!

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WordPress Popularity in Numbers

With a market share of 60.6%, WordPress holds its position and remains the most often-used content management system in the world. It leaves behind such giants as Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, Wix, Magento, and others. As of March 2019, it’s also the fastest-growing CMS with more than 800 new websites created daily in the top 10 million.

What’s more, the extension for creating e-commerce websites, which steps on WordPress’ toes in this list, is WooCommerce. It is responsible for creating 292 new online stores daily:

Source: https://w3techs.com/ (information has the quality of relevance as of April 13)

Speaking of e-commerce functionality, the WordPress plugin, WooCommerce, has a market share of 22% of the top 1 million e-commerce websites.

Source: https://barn2.co.uk/woocommerce-stats/

Again, leaving behind such powerful platforms as Shopify and Magento, WooCommerce maintenance such famous e-commerce stores as Weber, Ripley’s, Orange, etc.

If you have ever wondered which websites are built with WordPress, you would meet such big names as Mercedes-Benz, Vogue, BBC, Facebook, Microsoft, and more.

Source: https://themeisle.com/infographic-famous-brands-using-wordpress/

The demand for WordPress services is high indeed. To ensure that, just take a look at these statistics:

Another interesting thing refers to the most popular days for downloading WordPress. According to WP Central, Saturday stands for the least popular day for downloading WordPress 5.1. The biggest number of downloads mostly happens on Tuesday – 7 million in comparison to 1 million on Saturday.

By the way, if we turn the aforementioned 32.5% of the websites using WordPress in numbers, then it’s going to be approximately 24,800,000 live websites and the number keeps on rising.

Source: https://trends.builtwith.com/cms/WordPress (information has the quality of relevance as of April 13)

WordPress Security Issues: Outdated Versions, Plugins, and Themes

Just like every extra popular product, WordPress not only attracts the attention of its loyal clients but is a spotlight for hackers. According to some studies, approximately 90,000 attacks happen to WordPress-powered websites every minute.

The major reasons for the attacks are usually:

The good news is that there are certain strategies and precautionary measures that help to secure the website and prevent hacker attacks, but let’s take a look at the statistics.

According to Sucuri’s Hacked Website Trend Report 2018, they analyzed 25,466 infected websites, and 90% of attacks happen to WordPress sites.

Source: https://sucuri.net/reports/2018-hacked-website-report////

Still, a great number of hacker attacks – namely 36.7% – happened due to outdated WordPress versions.

Source: https://sucuri.net/reports/2018-hacked-website-report////

This is a slight decrease in comparison to the previous year which showed 39.3% of the attacks happened due to vulnerability issues.

The websites using the updated versions are supplied with reinforced security technologies. This way, the percentage of hacked websites (due to outdated versions vulnerability) in 2018 is, nonetheless, lower than in 2016 (61%).

Another piece of good news is that the analysis of the 74% of the vulnerabilities that appeared due to outdated versions is based on the websites that used WordPress version 3.X and lower. The WPScan Vulnerability Report compares the level of vulnerability of different versions. According to the report data, the WordPress 4.2 version is less vulnerable than older releases.

Source: https://wpvulndb.com/statistics

The bottom line: the WordPress team continues to enhance security technologies. Every new release comes out less vulnerable than its precursors. On your part, it’s important to update WordPress regularly to minimize vulnerabilities that exist.

Another vulnerable part of the WordPress website is the themes and plugins it uses. The third-party components of the website become a spotlight of hackers. Thereby, according to a Wordfence survey, 60% of owners of hacked websites that knew the nature of the attack stated that it happened due to a vulnerable theme or plugin:

Source: https://www.wordfence.com/2016/03/attackers-gain-access-wordpress-sites/

The bottom line: although plugins and themes seem to be a major risk factor when it comes to hacker attacks, you can still protect your website.

Firstly, keep your themes and plugins updated. The latest versions are less vulnerable to attacks. Secondly, make sure that you download the extensible components from reputable resources such as TemplateMonster or similar websites.

Speaking of TemplateMonster, it provides a large marketplace with themes and plugins. Currently, it contains more than 46,000 templates and has reached revenues of 15 million dollars. According to its co-founder, David Braun, the company has 5 million clients and 100k people visit its website every day.

A good reputation and a wide choice of products make TemplateMonster a worthy and reliable resource with high-quality themes and plugins.

What is more, the WordPress directory with plugins, also offers a wide choice of options. Currently, its database consists of more than 55,000 extensions. Some of the most popular are:

Another common reason for hacker attacks is weak login credentials. Therefore, it is crucial to create strong and secure passwords and mind the quality of the hosting.

Furthermore, hackers can get access to websites with the help of chain attacks. One of the easiest ways is when a malicious actor purchases a plugin from WordPress.org, inserts a backdoor into the plugin’s code, waits until someone downloads or updates the plugin, and then injects the backdoor.

The bottom line: such attacks are indeed harder to prevent. Still, WordPress usually spots the changes in the code and quickly removes such plugins from the directory. On your side, you can download reliable security plugins that will alert you if the plugin is dangerous.

So, as well as any other software, program, or digital platform, WordPress has vulnerable sides, but most of them can be enhanced. Moreover, the WordPress team regularly works on its improvement and every next version is released with fewer issues.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, WordPress isn’t flawless. Still, over the years, with dozens of worthy alternatives, it remains the most popular and one of the most convenient content management systems.

Due to its combination of rich functionality and simplicity in use, WordPress occupies leadership positions and incessantly attracts new users.

From our side, we can wish its team inspiration and fresh ideas that would contribute to the development of this platform and serve to create outstanding websites.

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