25 percent of all websites are run on WordPress

Seventy-five to go writes WordPress co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, referring to the W3Techs survey of the web which reports WordPress is now running  25% of all websites in the world.

No other content management system (CMS) runs even 3% of websites. Some content management systems used  by law firms, including MoveableType/TypePad and Hubspot, are at less than .1% market share.

It’s important to note that 57% of websites don’t use any identifiable CMS. Looking at just those websites that use a CMS, WordPress has an amazing 60% market share.

Though WordPress’ marketshare has almost doubled in the last four years, Matt sees great opportunity for growth ahead, especially in picking up those websites not using a CMS.

When I met with Matt last summer, I got the sense he envisioned a day when WordPress would be running 90 or 95% of websites. I saw a down to earth self-assurance that an open source solution being led and worked on in distributed fashion by  developers around the world would logically get WordPress to near ubiquitous status. Who am I to disagree?

At LexBlog, we began with Moveable Type (MT) back in 2004. WordPress was in its infancy. If I had to guess, it was probably at less than .1% market share.

Not being a technologist I went with software grounded in perl programming technology (MT), something Amazon was using and which, right or wrong, I viewed as being more secure. Security being key for law firms.

But I do remember talking with Tim Stanley, co-founder of FindLaw and founder of Justia, about the likelihood of WordPress, because it was open source software, prevailing at the end of the day.  Open source would make for a strong and robust development community bringing innovation and advances to WordPress that a proprietary CMS owned and run by a company could never bring.

LexBlog stayed with Moveable Type through 2010 because we believed it provided a more stable and secure platform for a multi-user environment for law firms. But from 2010 on, we’re all in on WordPress. The innovation and advancement of WordPress and it’s growing community collectively bringing more advancement makes it the obvious choice.

As WordPress has evolved, it has not only democratized published, WordPress has democratized development. WordPress is a platform from which to develop solutions and products tailored to the grow needs of niche businesses and industries. LexBlog is an example in its publishing platform built for lawyers and other professional services organizations.

An excerpt of an email I received this week from our product manager, Jared Sulzdorf, gives you a sense of LexBlog’s passion for WordPress.

I am proud to say that our platform is powered by the leading CMS in the world. Recently, WordPress’s market share jumped to 25%, officially making it the CMS that powers a quarter of the internet. It’s beautiful that we get to work on the shoulders of some truly capable and intelligent people…

The purpose of Jared’s not was to make sure I never let LexBlog shy away from what it means to work with WordPress and all that comes from the WordPress community, it being one of the core strengths of our product.

Onward and upward WordPress.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Titanas