10 years later, the future for WordPress looks even brighter.

I recently attended another Wordcamp in San Francisco.

Returning to this annual event each year to gather with the WordPress faithful is always both an enlightening and humbling experience.

While it’s great to connect with friends in the WordPress community and get introduced to new ones, it’s even more impressive to see the growth, interest, and enthusiasm that this eclectic group generates.

From San Francisco to a global community.

After a modest beginning over 8 years ago in San Francisco, there have now been over 300 WordCamp’s held around the world. The events provide attendees with over 1,026 speakers covering everything from the granular details of code to the essentials on how to start using WordPress.

WordCamp’s have become the go-to place to get insights, news, tips, and updates on the future direction for this amazing open-source platform that recently celebrated its 10th year anniversary.

Expanding reach and influence of a 10 year old.

Speciality hosting company, WP Engine, recently conducted a brand awareness survey to measure if WordPress is known outside of the developer, blogger and tech circles from where it began.

They asked over 1500 adult respondents, “Have you heard of WordPress?” Surprisingly, over 29% said yes which indicates that the reach and awareness of WordPress have grown significantly from its geeky beginnings.

State of the Word.

As a featured item on the two day event’s agenda, Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, shared his views on the 2013 State of the WordPress world. He also disclosed some very impressive numbers including:
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• | Of the top 10 million sites on the web, +20% now run on WordPress
• | WordPress has been downloaded over 46 million in the last 12 months
• | There are over 26,000 Plugins in the directory that extend functionality
• | +336 new themes have been released to the repository

The take away is that WordPress has expanded far beyond its modest beginning as an online blogging tool. To document and understand these changes, another extensive survey was conducted to find out just what people were using WordPress for.

The survey asked a number of questions and over 30K people responded from 178 countries. The survey found that people use many devices to use WordPress including:

• Web | 98%
• iPad/iPhone | 31%
• Android | 30%
• Android Tablet | 18%
• Desktop App | 12%

What’s more, 7% of respondents said they’re using WordPress as an app platform. Interestingly, WordPress is now being used in multiple ways at once instead of just as a blogging tool, a CMS, an eCommerce solution or an app platform.

The future paints a picture where WordPress will be used as the foundation of a variety of web solutions that are still evolving. And that future may be very different from how many use WordPress today.

Validation and affirmation of choice.

In our view, all of the content and the data that Matt shared in two days of presentations indicates that the future for WordPress is bright.

What’s more, the numbers provide affirmation that this truly remarkable platform will continue to evolve and improve in ways that are not yet imagined. Thanks to the largest, talented and passionate community of developers around the world, WordPress will be improved and enhanced to new levels of performance and customization.

The result is that businesses can feel confident that this platform will provide a flexible foundation for growth, Content Marketing and social engagement.  And if they chose to have their site built on WordPress, they will be mitigating the risk of obsolescence.

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