How WordPress Evolved From Challenges to Innovation? State Of WordPress in 2024

What is the future of WordPress? Is it dying? But, it is one of the most popular CMS in 2024. So, Is it thriving? Given the current situation, all of these speculations are bound to happen. Well, we will uncover the truth behind these speculations in this blog. 

We write this blog to highlight and share the true state of WordPress in 2024 and beyond. And let us be honest, WordPress has been here for a long time and will change the way conventional CMS operates.

To begin with, let us first explore the origin of WordPress and how it was used in the past. 

The History of WordPress from 2003-2024:

WordPress was first developed by American blogger Matt Mullenweg and British blogger Mike Little in 2003 to create blogs. Little did they know that they were making something groundbreaking. 

WordPress is an open-source platform driven by a community of developers and supporters. The first version of WordPress was based on b2 Cafelog which helped in generating XHTML 1.1 compliant templates. The interface was so new and fresh that it attracted many users to try the interface. 

Gradually, the interface evolved to include the following functionality year by year. 

• 2004: Introduction of Plugin Architecture;
• 2005: Introduction of Pages, moderation tools, and a new Theme System. 
• December 2005: Introduction of new Admin dashboard;
• 2006: Automattic filed the trademark registration for WordPress and WordPress logo;
• 2008: Happy Cog helped WordPress design a new interface;
• 2009: WPBeginner, a resource website for beginners was launched by Syed Balkhi;
• 2010: Automattic transferred the ownership of WordPress to WordPress Foundation;
• 2010: WordPress 3.0 was released that introduced WordPress as a CMS;
• 2011: New plugins were developed for WordPress eCommerce;
• 2012: Introduction of Theme customizer, theme previews, and new media manager;
• 2013:  WordPress 3.7 was introduced with the new automatic update features;
• 2014: Improved WordPress visual post editor was released;
• 2015: WordPress 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 were released with improved localization, emoji support, laying down infrastructure for WordPress REST API;
• 2016: New versions released which focused on streamlining updates for plugins and themes.
• 2017: WordPress’s new versions were released, which focused on the introduction of new widgets, audio, video, images, etc.
• 2018: WordPress 5.0 was released with a classic editing experience;
• 2019: Implemented SiteHelp project into the core;
• 2020: Despite the Pandemic and its repercussions, WordPress released 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 versions;
• 2021:  A new template feature was introduced. 
• 2022: Version 5.9 focused on improving the full site editing experience. 
• 2023: Version 6.2 allowed anyone to create custom WordPress layouts.
• Present, 2024: WordPress is evolving and focused on enhancing the full-site editing experience. 

You can read more about the WordPress evolution in this blog by WPBeginner, 

The Present State of WordPress in 2024, Statistics That Will Blow Your Mind:

WordPress is evolving, considering the ever-evolving needs of users. Today, it is the most powerful feature-rich CMS, easily customizable, scalable, and supports everything that one can ask for. The following WordPress statistics confirm how the platform is globally loved and will lead the charts as the go-to content management system. 

• As of September WordPress statistics 2024, 43.5% of all websites globally use WordPress. There was a rise of an impressive 17.4% usage across all websites since January’13. 
• This makes it around 478 million websites built using WordPress.
• WordPress provides more than 70,000 plugins. 
• Netcraft’s report shows a total of 1.1 billion WordPress websites including blogs and regular websites.
• WordPress CMS market share is around 62.6%.
• 409 million people view 20 billion WordPress pages monthly. 
• The WordPress.org theme directory contains nearly 12,000 free themes.
• ThemeForest, one of the popular marketplaces, added another 12,000 paid theme options.
• Talking about Themes, Hello Elementor, currently has 13292 websites using it. 
• Divi Theme has 10,183 websites using it. 
• Astra is on the third rank with 10155 websites using the theme. 
• Elementor plugin has more than 10+ million active installations;
• Contact Form has more than 10+ million users. 
• WordPress WooCommerce has 7+ million users.
• Akismet has 6+ million users.
• Gutenberg is the code name for the WordPress editor and has nearly 82.7 million active installations. 

These numbers reflect the love for WordPress amongst the users. You can read a detailed report about the same in the blog written by WPZOOM.

Given the above information, it is clear that WordPress is revolutionizing the CMS landscape. But what led to the notion that everybody thought that WordPress was ending? 

The Downfall of WordPress and the Rise from the Shrinkage:

Is WordPress dying? Our answer is no, it is not!

Ever since its evolution, the platform faced a decline in its popularity for the first time between 2022-2023. Here are the possible reasons why WordPress might have faced a delineation.  

Security concerns:

If you look at the statistics, WordPress is preferred by over 800 million websites. However, this popularity raises the vulnerability of the platform. Hackers analyze these vulnerabilities and hack the system, putting the CMS at risk. 

According to Colorib, nearly 13,000 WordPress websites are hacked every day, which makes it 4.7 million sites a year. 

These security issues pose possible concerns for developers who are considering using WordPress for their projects. 

Update and compatibility issues:

Many WordPress editors are facing an issue saying “If the WordPress is updated, the plug might stop working and vice versa. They have also raised their voice to notify that the breakdown of the WordPress website is not uncommon. 

Unstructured and Messy Code:

Developers find it difficult to manage clean code practices with WordPress. Since it is an open-source CMS platform, multiple developers can work around the coding which leads to variation in code styles. 

Negativity around Gutenberg:

Given the hate among Gutenberg users,  people are reconsidering their decision to use WordPress. WordPress introduced Gutenberg to upgrade and modernize the concept of their conventional editor. However, it looks like it didn’t solve the purpose. 

Gutenberg users were not really impressed by the block system, especially while writing long posts.

“Slow, clunky, ugly, and confusing user interface. Fortunately, we don’t have to use it and after disabling it, we can go one step further by using the Disable Gutenberg plug-in which will kill it completely and save on the unnecessary server requests for its unused CSS and JS resources that it still insists on loading” – User

The reviews reflect user’s frustration while using WordPress Gutenberg.  However, there are also a few who appreciate the Gutenberg evolution. 

“As a javascript developer, Gutenberg makes my life much easier. Also, it is much more enjoyable and flexible for the admin users.” – Emanuel Saramago

Given the mixed reviews of Gutenberg, it is difficult to predict the success of the CMS in the times to come. 

The rising competition of other website builders. 

For years, WordPress has ruled the CMS world. But, with the introduction of other website builders such as Wix, and Square, the popularity of WordPress is questioned. 

The new players introduced very modern features and changed the way websites were built using WordPress. However, if you run down a thorough comparison, even these platforms have a downside but are preferred amongst businesses who wish speedy website development. 

But… 

Let us be very clear that,

WordPress is not dying and is back in the game and how? With nearly 40% of websites running over WordPress, it is pretty clear that WordPress will remain the favorite go-to CMS platform for developers. Here are the reasons why:

The  core updates: 

You can expect core functionality improvements in WordPress that will bring in performance improvements and adaptability. 

WordPress core updates will also focus on the website’s overall robustness, introduction of new APIs, and support for promising technologies. 

Massive community support:

WordPress will always remain a “For the People, and By the People” platform.  The platform is supported by a team of enthusiastic developers who actively participate in the platform’s growth. 

Gutenberg editor advancements:

Considering the honest feedback received from the community, WordPress is now working on enhancing Gutenberg’s capabilities. WordPress will introduce more flexibility and customization features to improve the full-site editing experience. 

The smooth integration of WordPress with other tools will also give a major boost to  Gutenberg’s popularity. 

WordPress is Google’s favorite:

Websites built on WordPress are easily indexed by Google. WordPress being  Google’s favorite gives better visibility to websites and ensures that they are indexed and bring traffic. 

Security enhancements:

WordPress is all set to introduce improved security measures such as robust encryption, improved user authentication procedures, and better monitoring tools. The enhancements will bring back the trust that was lost over security breaches. 

Increased versatility:

The platform that was once developed for blogging is now evolving as an eCommerce development platform too. WordPress is becoming extremely versatile and offers flexibility in developing large, customizable, and scalable websites. 

Improved user experience:

The upcoming WordPress updates will focus on enhancing the WordPress dashboard experience and user interface experience. The enhancements in WordPress’ intuitiveness will benefit both the developers and the end users. 

Back with a bang! Needless to say, considering the inclusivity mindset of the WordPress team, the changes that WordPress is planning to introduce will bring back the lost popularity of WordPress.  

The Future of WordPress: 

WordPress will remain modern and relevant in the times to come. Ask us how? Well, here are a few things that confirm how WordPress will rule over the CMS experience. 

• According to Matias Ventura, CMS will now enter the third phase of development. 
• WordPress Woocommerce is becoming a popular eCommerce platform with more than 39% of the share in the eCommerce solution market. 
• AI and other advanced technologies will be used to their full potential to let people explore the benefits of the advanced CMS. There are many WordPress plugins available in the market that use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies. These plugins will help in improving WordPress search, grammar, content suggestions, and sales conversion. Here are a few AI-based plugins available for WordPress, SeedProd, Divi AI, WPCode, and All in One SEO. 
• WordPress is planning to add multi-author blogs and eLearning sites that will allow multiple authors to work on the same article at the same time. 
• WordPress websites serve a global audience. Hence, the WordPress website will provide support in multiple languages. The multilingual website will allow users to choose the language of their choice from the dropdown link and change the website’s language. 
• WordPress is offering a 100-year legacy plan to businesses that have long-term goals for their project and want to protect their online histories. 
• The introduction of a headless CMS will serve as a boon to developers as it will provide a fully decoupled CMS capability enhancing flexibility. 

Given the above advancements, WordPress will continue to dominate the digital landscape for years to come. And hence, our belief in the CMS will continue to grow forever.

Our contribution to WordPress:

IT Path Solutions strongly believes that WordPress will never lose its charm, and hence we strongly invest our time and resources to contribute back to the WordPress community. 

5 % of our entire team is committed to working on WordPress development. We provide unwavering support and contribution to foster the technological growth of WordPress by being a part of doaction.org.

IT Path Solutions also contributes to the Five for the Future community where we responsibly contribute resources and support the growth of the platform. 

Last year in 2023, we offered silver sponsorship to WordCamp Ahmedabad. This was an excellent opportunity for us and the entire WordPress fraternity to engage and interact with WordPress enthusiasts.

Final Thoughts:

Just like many CMS and eCommerce enthusiasts, WordPress has become our personal favorite. It offers a wide range of advantages, from multilingual support to cost-efficiency, from scalability to full ownership and control, and from robust eCommerce features to seamless integration capabilities. With WordPress, you get everything you need to build a powerful online presence.

At IT Path Solutions, we are committed to embracing the potential of WordPress to help businesses design and develop functional websites tailored to their needs.

Ready to build a powerful WordPress site for your business? Let’s create something amazing together! Get in touch today.

Want a beautifully crafted WordPress site that stands out? We’ve got you covered. Contact us now to learn more!

Transform your online presence with custom WordPress development. Reach out today and see how we can help!