The 2013 State of the Word was recently presented at WordCamp San Fransisco. State of the Word is an annual presentation given by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress. He talks about the developments and progress WordPress has made in the past year and the future plans and hopes for the platform.
Even if you don't personally use WordPress and use another content management system (Joomla, Drupal, etc) it is still good to watch the State of the Word's to know what is going on with WordPress. Keep in mind WordPress is the largest content management system (CMS) out there and is getting more popular and more powerful everyday. I don't see this trend changing anytime soon and I don't think any other CMS can catch-up with it's rapid development.
So what is new with WordPress? Apparently the Automattic team has reworked the plugin review system. “Now all ratings are attached to reviews.” commented Mullenweg. Essentially this means nobody can give you 1-star without saying why they think it deserves that rating. Also the plugin author can now respond in a thread to a negative review. If the plugin improves a reviewer can change it. Matt Mullenweg did many 1-star reviews have been changed to 5-star reviews.
Another interesting development is that there will be a WordPress book coming out soon. According to Matt Mullenweg it will the first book to be written on Github, which is for sharing coding databases.
There was also talk about the fact that WordPress will start to become not just a blog/CMS platform but an application platform. Automattic will be focusing more on becoming a developer resource (developer.wordpress.org). Mullenweg thinks of WordPress as a platform that with different building blocks such as a CMS, blog, or e-commerce blocks you can build in or take out as you need.
Matt also talked about the MP6 plugin project within Automattic. I have never heard of this but apparently it changes the user interface administration in the backend of WordPress. You can change colors, it is responsive, and it looks pretty slick from what I could tell.
WordPress 3.8 apparently will feature Luke Skywalker and Automattic hopes to release it sometime in December this year (I think). Mullenweg also said he would like to start releasing the default WordPress theme like automakers. (Automakers release the new model before the year even starts often.)
At the time WordCamp San Francisco took place WordPress 3.6 was not released but was on August 1st, 2013. WordPress 3.6 “Oscar” was named after Oscar Peterson, the great Jazz pianist. In State of the Word 2013 Matt Mulleweg highlighted some of the rising “WordPress rockstars” as he called it that have helped with it's continued development. They did show the video for WordPress 3.6 (which I am running now) and it is sweet!
“Be the change with WordPress.” said Mullwenweg at the end of the presentation. He really encourages people to get involved with helping out in the WordPress community.
You can watch the State of the Word right here or by visiting WordPress.TV. There was also a Q&A session after the State of the Word presentation.
Some of the most interesting parts of Matt's State of the Word presentations is when he mentions the growth of WordPress along with some WordPress Stats and numbers. I've tried to organize them here;
WordPress Stats
- 18.9% of the web now runs on the WordPress platform. This is a 2.2% increase from last year. (Matt mention it should be as popular as Justin Bieber.)
- 46 million WordPress downloads from (46,355,774) in the last year. 175,000 everyday. (That number does not include automatic scripts installations only downloads from WordPress.org.)
- In a WPEngine survey they asked US adults, “Have you heard of WordPress?” 29.7% of survey respondents said “Yes.”
- 336 WordPress Themes were added to the directory this year. That is 2.3 as many as last year. Impressive considering each theme goes through a theme review process.
- 1,500 people were active in WordPress Core development over the past year.
- 30,000 respondents from 178 different countries took part in the WordPress survey. “Community” and “ease-of-use” are what people like the best about WordPress. The least? “Plugins” are the least favorite along with “updates” and “security.”
- 15 updates for the WordPress mobile apps were released. There were 3 updates for iOS, 6 for Android, and 6 for Windows phones. (Who wants a Windows phone?)
- Make.wordpress.org blogs have received 10,945 posts and comments in 2012, which is double the amount since last year.
- 50,000 blogs that were created 7 days ago on WordPress.com will be active today. That is only a 96% rate of attrition rate of bloggers. They believe this number is higher for WordPress.org users because of the extra steps. Since you have to buy a domain, hosting, and setup a few things yourself.
WordPress Plugin States
- Over 40,000 plugins have been relaunched.
- 9,334 plugins requested to be reviewed in the past year and 6,758 were approved for the WordPress plugin directory by Automattic.
- There are now 26,000 WordPress plugins in the directory.
WordPress Usage
- 98% of people use WordPress on web.
- 31% use WordPress on an iPad or iPhone
- 30% use Android mobile phones
- 18% Android tablets
- 13% Desktop Apps
What do you use WordPress for?
- 69% use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)
- 20% Blog/CMS
- 6% as a Blog
- 7% as an App platform (new entry this year)
WordCamp Stats
- 314 WordCamps have been held to date
- 72 WordCamps have taken place in the past year.
- 1,026 people have given talks at WordCamp over the past year.
- Videos of WordCamp presentations on WordPress.TV have been viewed 1.4 million times. So you better prepare a good talk at WordCamp! 🙂
WordPress 10th Anniversary
- 4,999 people showed up to WordPress 10th Anniversary celebrations around the World according to Meetup.com.