As WordPress enters its thirteenth year, it’s interesting to reflect on what has been achieved in the last twelve.
Twelve years ago today, I left a comment on comment on Matt Mullenweg’s blog (back when it was photomatt.net) that kicked off a fork of the un-maintained b2/Cafelog blogging software that turned into WordPress!
From those beginnings WordPress has matured into a world-beating open source CMS. B2/Cafelog was used by perhaps 2,000 bloggers. Now WordPress runs millions of sites around the world. In fact over 23% of the web and still growing!
WordPress has had an interesting year as usual
For me, the past twelve months have been a mixed lot. Personally, I failed to meet a some key goals I set myself. Perhaps because I set too many! In other areas, things have gone well.
One of the things I helped to organise last year was WordCamp Manchester, where we kept it almost 100% local speakers, managed to achieve 50% female speakers on both tracks. Videos of all talk are available on WordPress.tv. We also had a well attended Contributor’s day. We are hoping to run another successful WordCamp Manchester later this year too.
My WordPress training has gone very well this year. I’ve really enjoy teaching in the classroom and interacting with the attendees. It’s personally very rewarding.
The Manchester WordPress User Group I run has gone from strength to strength with some great speakers and talks throughout the last year and plans for more this year. Our Meetup membership has grown to more than 500.
Out in the wider world, WordPress has continued to grow and gone from strength to strength. WordPress supports a world-wide, billion dollar, industry from WordPress specialists like me (I’ve completed my sixth year trading as my company zed1.com); growing WordPress-based companies like Human Made; through to multi-million dollar companies like Copyblogger, WooThemes, and of course Automattic.
As usual, praise must go to the fantastic community around WordPress, and the awesome power of the GNU GPL open source license.
Here’s to the next year
I predict it will be another great year for WordPress. I hope it will be a great year for me and you too.
How has your WordPress year been? And how do you think the next will be? Leave me a comment below and let me know.
Update: HumanMade, now sixteen strong, can hardly be described as ‘small’. I updated their mention.
Fantastic. So, Mike, this begs the questions: What goals did you set, how would you do it differently, and what are your goals for the next decade plus with WordPress?
Having been there since nearly the beginning, it is amazing to see where WordPress has gone, and where it is going. You and Matt have kept it on a straight and narrow yet wide and inclusive path…it is really a beautiful thing. Thanks so much for everything you’ve done.
As for me, it feels like WordPress kept me on track all these years, a rock to stand and walk on, keeping me focused and passionate about everything I do. It’s amazing. And I love the WordPress Community. What an eclectic and vibrant group of people!
Some personal health goals, I didn’t start acting on until the second half of the year. Business-wise: three or four projects at once is too many and I barely moved on anything.
Alas! I haven’t had any influence on the direction of WordPress for a very long time. My contributions are small and few these days. But the awesome community (and it really is awe inspiring) has made WordPress the phenomenon that it is.
Really interesting post Mike. I’m a full time developer based in Hull but I might make my way to the next WordCamp in Manchester. Keep up the good work.