I find it hard to believe but it has now been ten years since my fateful comment on Matt’s blog that kicked off what became the WordPress project!
From those humble beginnings of a simple unmaintained blogging platform (b2/Cafelog) to a world-beating open source CMS. B2/Cafelog was used by perhaps 2,000 bloggers. Now WordPress runs more than 60 million sites around the world. That’s over 17.5% of the web!
WordPress Industry
WordPress now supports a world-wide industry from individual WordPress specialists like me (I’ve just completed my fourth year as my own company zed1.com); small WordPress-based companies like Code for the People; through to multi-million dollar companies like Copyblogger, WooThemes, and of course Automattic.
Praise must go as usual to the fantastic community around WordPress, the singular vision of Matt Mullenweg, and the awesome power of the GNU GPL open source license.
Here’s to the next year
As WordPress enters it’s eleventh year, with version 3.5.1 recently released and version 3.6 currently in the making, I predict it will be another great year for WordPress.
Short link to this post: https://z1.tl/11i
Hi Mike,
You deserve a medal and a blue plaque for all of your wordpress work!
I would really like to find someone to help me with wordpress, the person that set up our website no longer had the time to take care of his customers. Now I am in need of help, out office is in Canyon Lake California. Is there anyone out there that can teach me all I need to know about wordpress so I can update some out dated informaton that is on our website??
@Lorrie:
Hello, Lorrie!
Maybe I might be able to help you with mantaining your site. I’ve been a WordPress user for 7 yeare and developer for the last one year. I’m located in Slovenia, Europe but maybe we could work something out. E-mail me and we might find a common ground for cooperation.
Best regads
I love WordPress,I have been using it for about nine years now.I blog about why people should use WP,I test WP themes and plugin’s on my sites.I am now learning to make my own WordPress plugins,and will probably do a theme or two.Thanks to you and all the others, the internet community can set up there own sites easily and economically using WordPress.
Thanks for reaching out and commenting, who knows where some of us might be if it weren’t for this great open source software.
Cheers to 10 years!
Congratulations Mike!
You are a hero of the community and such a nice guy too. Well done on reaching this milestone – the next ten years are going to be even better.
I have been into Web Design for 6 years and WP is the best and I can do basically anything on an already designed system!!! That’s the stuff man keep it up you guys were just a year ahead of me on design and I love WordPress I design in all Word Press and believe it or not some companies don’t even realize they use Word Press LOL!!!
I like wordpress !Thanks!
我喜欢wordpress！谢谢！
Pat on the back dude!
I just come here because I see this post on my dashboard.
That was a long journey that WordPress was 10 years now. I love that WordPress is now always improving, from the first time I know it on April 2007 and install it the first time on my server one year later on version 2.2. Now it is 3.5.1, wonderful 🙂
This is so awesome – cheers to WordPress!
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Once I started blogging I wondered, “Why did I never think of doing this earlier?” But then I realized if I had tried to start blogging several years ago it would have been impossible! Without knowing HTML and having no tech savvy, I probably would have given up the idea entirely. For you all to make this so accessible to people like me is a gift. Thanks!
“But then I realized if I had tried to start blogging several years ago it would have been impossible! Without knowing HTML and having no tech savvy, I probably would have given up the idea entirely.”
That’s simply not true at all, not even close. There were many blogging choices well before WordPress, including but not limited to Greymatter, Blogger, and Moveable Type, that allowed anyone to blog.
WordPress is great, but let’s at least try to get the history right.
Yes, thank you so much for maintaining the project and then expanding it and working with everyone. I just noticed I first signed up at WordPress.org a little over 7 years ago, and I quickly ditched PHPNuke, Movable Type, and a few smaller CMS that I was using to power some of our businesses. Seven years ago I moved everything to WP. WordPress has been the base of 2 different multimillion-dollar businesses me and my partners have built and sold. Plus, we have tried to give back by hiring lots of developers around the world to create many plugins (and also sponsoring a couple wordcamps). What you guys created and built on top of b2/Cafelog is fantastic and the platform itself (when coupled with a great server and copious resources) lets me sleep well at night knowing that the teams of people around the world that continue to donate time and expertise make this an unbeatable platform.
Most importantly, you have helped build an economy around WP. Think of that: you are giving something away for free and yet a strong economy has been built around it. 10-15 years ago people scoffed at open source because they could not see this type of great future. But we are now here, and WP is a proof of concept that open source does work.
When you say 10 years, everything jumps into focus and I say “WOW!” — this has been a long road you guys have trod, making an even better WP for all of us. You guys have dealt with GNU/GPL issues, expansion, and focus — I’m sure at many times it seems like herding cats. Keep up all the great work!
Time flies, eh? Thank you for being the catalyst that got this whole WordPress thing going, Mike. Your work has helped developers, designers, bloggers, webmasters, business owners, hobbyists, students — and so, so many more — around the world.
I remember when a friend of mine was using b2… I was using Greymatter at the time, and toying with TextPattern to a certain extent. Everything converged with WP. Thank you for that. 🙂
And from all the guys who share and learn from your WordPress wisdom at MWUG (Manchester WordPress Users Group) we salute you!
After 10 years its brilliant that you are still giving your time and knowledge freely to help the wordpress community and help freelancers like myself build much better wordpress sites.
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Thank you very much for WordPress. Using it for several years. It is really nice.
The year of the achievement. 10years and WordPress is no more a baby!!! Happy Birthday to you!!
Congratulations Milke and thank you for helping create such a beautiful thing!
http://ifamily.co.uk/wordpress-10-years-of-free-press
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thanks for all you’ve done!
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I love WordPress. Keep up the good work.
Best Regards,
Peter
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