From backyard blogging to infinity and beyond!
This week NASA successfully launched their latest mission – their new website. And it’s powered by WordPress.
WordPress has now become by far the most popular way for organisations to promote themselves on the Internet, running over 43% of all websites worldwide. But what is WordPress, and how did it become as trusted and widespread as it is today?
Getting off the ground
In 2003, WordPress started as a simple blogging tool. Technically called a Content Management System (CMS), it was a basic but useful way of categorising and publishing content with some rudimentary styling applied – for example, you could collate your posts into categories, and allow your users to browse through these categories, with a few pictures thrown in for good measure. All this could then be published to the world with only a few additional clicks.
Founder and MD of Enterprising IT, Martin Carter, remembers those early days well.
“Back in the early 2000s, WordPress was already renowned for its ease of use for the general public, but was definitely not considered a professional tool. It was far too limited for serious software engineers. Its functions and designs were quite basic, and all sites looked very similar. WordPress was great for personal blogs, but showed no signs at that stage of becoming anything more. It was the sort of thing you’d recommend to a family member for their personal website, not something you’d suggest for a business of any size.”
However, WordPress had already started its journey to become the world’s most popular website platform.
Ignition sequence start
During that first decade, WordPress began to evolve – slowly at first, then more rapidly as ever-increasing numbers of people began to use it. Attracted initially because of its low startup costs (the software itself was free) its user-friendly nature and the flexibility it offered, individuals and developers began to look for ways to make it do the things it hadn’t originally excelled at. Some of these attempts were, naturally, pretty terrible! But others were genuinely innovative, and became widely adopted. And all the time, the open source framework of WordPress itself was evolving too, with the number of contributors growing year on year.
Ground support
Openness and community have been the two key elements in WordPress’s growth. By quickly adding the ability for anyone at all to write custom plugins and themes, and for ensuring that users can select and install whichever of these third-party solutions best suited their needs, a huge user-reviewed ecosystem of free and paid tools has evolved that meet almost every requirement. Good ideas were shared and built upon, both in the core product and in third-party tools. And throughout, the core ease-of-use that has always been WordPress’s main strength – especially in site administration (e.g. adding and categorising new pages or blog posts) – has continued.
Martin, a long-time software professional and technology strategist, says:
“Concentrating on ensuring that their core functionality was stable and user-friendly, while opening up the platform for others to create whatever complex designs and functions might be needed in addition, was a really powerful move. I worked with several software providers in the 2010s who had their own bespoke CMS systems. They all simply ceased that aspect of their development and moved onto WordPress to power the content elements of their designs. WordPress just worked – so it became one less thing to spend expensive development time on. Software developers and website designers could now concentrate on adding features that delivered real customer benefit instead. And there was also less time needed training users, as there were increasingly large amounts of online materials that helped users of all levels to understand what to do.”
A Mickey Mouse system?
WordPress is now so widely used as a base for serving website content that even huge corporations trust it with their brand presence online. With both Disney and NASA running it, one could even say that finally the two Buzzes – Aldrin and Lightyear – are united on one platform.
Other notable firms or organisations are Capgemini, The White House, The New York Post, Sony Music and any number of large global brands.
I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more!
One silly further example. Inspired by this quote, we checked out the official site of the state of Kansas, and the official site of the band Toto. Sure enough, the two sites – though understandably extremely different – are both WordPress underneath. It really is everywhere!
With Open Source Power comes Added Responsibility
It’s not all upsides. While the fact that WordPress is open source provides a lot of benefits, it also comes with responsibilities. The very nature of the tool means that it’s continually evolving, with new versions, plugins, and themes regularly released.
These updates, essential for performance and security, mean that website owners need to be proactive. Regular maintenance, prompt updates, and vigilance are required to keep the platform at its peak, ensuring security and optimized performance. Frequent backups, security monitoring, and optimization are vital to a smooth-running site.
Fortunately there are plenty of website providers out there who do precisely this. Here’s Martin from Enterprising IT again:
“We made the decision back in 2020 that all our MyStartupSite and MyBespokeSite packages would use WordPress, and have never regretted that strategy. We add a lot of premium development tools and features of course, but we always ensure that however far we extend WordPress, we always retain the ease of use that it’s known for. We find that our clients love having the flexibility to add or edit their own content (though we are also happy do this for them if they prefer). And we know they love the reassurance that their whole stack of tools (over 30 updates per month on average!) is being well looked after on their behalf. Our customers can be confident that their site is always up to date, secure and performing well, and there is always someone on hand if they have any queries. WordPress was a sound strategic choice for Enterprising IT Ltd, and we look forward to using it for many years to come.”
Field of Daydreams: “If you build it, they probably won’t come”
One more note of caution. It’s tempting to think that because a simple platform like WordPress exists, putting your content into it is all you need to do to launch a site and attract customers.
However there are so many websites now (over a billion and counting) that launching a new website is like planting a single sapling in a dense forest the size of Yorkshire. (Yorkshire is the UK’s biggest county, at 2.9 million acres. For our US cousins – that’s the size of the state of Delaware. A whole lot of trees!)
This explains why 91% of sites on the Internet attract literally NO traffic at all, according to a recent study. So while WordPress has helped democratise the process of launching a site, these statistics highlight the importance of expert knowledge and advice. You need your new site optimised for visibility and engagement. You’ll want it indexed, noticed, linked to, and ranking in search engines, so that it can rise above the forest canopy and catch the sunlight.
It is far better (and cheaper) to build these important factors in right from the start than to try to add them at a later date (though both can be done, so don’t worry if you’ve already launched a site that isn’t attracting traffic – we can help with this too). If you’d like FREE help and advice with anything you’ve read about here, please get in touch with us today.
Conclusion: WordPress and its continuing mission
From its inception to its current-day dominance, WordPress’s journey is a testament to its adaptability, robustness, and the power of community-driven development. And as its usage numbers continue to grow, edging towards an amazing half of all websites worldwide, its success story helps point the way for many in the world of digital innovation.
And what does this mean for you? With the right approach to maintenance and security, and some added tools and expertise to get your site noticed, it means that you too can use WordPress to promote your business. To boldly reach customers you’ve never reached before.
After all, if it’s good enough for NASA, it might just be good enough for everyone else.
