WordPress powers more than 708 million websites, and considering there are only 1.7 billion websites on the internet, that’s an impressive number.
To be clear, that’s about 43% of all the websites on the internet. Not bad for a free and open-source blogging platform that’s barely two decades old and written and maintained by just a handful of people.
How it All Began
The history of WordPress is pretty fascinating. As the legend goes, WordPress was first launched on May 27th, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little under the GPLv2 (Later) License.
You have to note that WordPress started after an existing blogging software called B2/Cafelog was discontinued by its developers. In 2003, two of its users, Matt and Mike, decided to build a new system on top of B2/Catalogue.Â
They would launch the WordPress 0.5 version on May 27th, 2013. That same year, they would follow it up with an updated version, WordPress 0.7.
How Big is WordPress Now?Â
It’s barely two decades old, and WordPress has already become the most popular blogging platform around. Of course, this has a lot to do with its open-source nature, friendly user interface, and great community.
Today, WordPress has turned into a full-fledged content management system (CMS) complete with plugins, themes, and the supportive backing of its fantastic community.Â
These factors have also made it the go-to CMS for small businesses and bloggers alike — and these types of websites now make up more than 43% of all the websites on the internet.
As you can see, WordPress’s popularity has had a steady year-over-year rise. That explains why an average of 661 new WordPress websites keep popping up daily.Â
Other Impressive Numbers About WordPress
- 14.73% of the world’s top 100 websites are built on WordPress
- The official plugins directory has seen over 59K plugins, and the number of available themes is now at 7.4K
WordPress is the Best CMS for SEO
WordPress is, hands down, the best CMS for SEO, and here are some of the reasons pointing towards this:Â
- Focus on user experience
- The ability to create custom permalinks
- Fast load time
- Constant updates and security patches
- The ability to use WordPress with virtually any hosting service
- Optimized for mobile users (You have to know that more than 54.6 of web traffic comes from mobile devices).Â
- SEO-friendly themes
- WordPress has loads of plugins made specifically for SEO (such as Rankmath and Yoast)
- Social media integration
- Easy image optimization
- Can easily integrate with other software tools
Top CMS’s Dominating Google SERPs
There’s no doubt that the world loves WordPress, but how does it fare compared with other CMSs? Let’s see.
| CMS | Google SERP Share |
| WordPress | 45% |
| MediaWiki | 9% |
| Drupal | 8% |
| Adobe Experience Manager | 4% |
| Ruby on Rails | 4% |
| ATG Web Commerce | 1% |
The Winner: WordPress
As you can see, WordPress dominates nearly half of Google’s SERP share. That means, for every two top-ranking websites running on CMS, there’s a fair chance one of them runs on WordPress.Â
WordPress Security
The biggest concern people often have with WordPress is security. Just like any other CMS, WordPress is also prone to security threats.
WordPress Security
The biggest concern people often have with WordPress is security. Just like any other CMS, WordPress is also prone to security threats.
There are at least 90K WordPress websites hacked every minute, according to WordFence. That’s more than 2.7 million websites hacked in a month.
The biggest entry points for these attacks are plugins, accounting for over 50% of these hacks. Other hacks come from themes, the administrator account, and file inclusion attacks.
So, the best way to stay safe with WordPress is to keep your plugins, themes, and core updated at all times. You also want to make sure you’re downloading the plugins from reputable sites only.
Stay away from abandoned plugins, and in case of an attack, contact the plugin’s owner asap.
Other ways your WordPress sites could suffer attacks include brute force (16%), followed by hosting, themes, and core vulnerabilities (accounting for less than 10% of all the attacks).
| Hacking Method | % |
| Plugin | 56% |
| Brute Force | 17% |
| Core | 7.5% |
| Theme | 5.2% |
| Hosting | 5% |
| File Permissions | 3% |
| Old Files | 2% |
| Password Theft | 1.4 |
| Workstation | 1% |
| Phishing | 1% |
| Insider | 0.5% |
| Server | 0.3% |
| FTP | 0.3% |
How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Dedicated WordPress Developer
The cost of hiring a dedicated WordPress developer will vary depending on the level of expertise needed and your location.
You can expect to pay anywhere between $50 and $150 per hour for a WordPress developer. For really small tasks like fixing login issues, you should be able to find someone who’ll charge around $20-$50.
A decent WordPress developer who can fulfil most of your needs will be charging around $60-$100 per hour.Â
Agency Rates
Since agency rates vary depending on the location and amount of work needed, you’ll need to do a bit more digging. To give you an idea, here’s what some agencies are charging:
- Small and medium-sized agencies: $50 to $120 per hour
- Medium market reputable agency: $115 to $175% per hour
- Larger agencies: $150 to $250 per hour
For simple WordPress sites, you can expect to pay anywhere between $500 and $5K, while more complex websites will require a budget of anywhere between $10 — $50K.
Why Should You Hire a Dedicated WordPress Developer?
Most of the WordPress websites you see around are nothing more than a canned theme slapped together and equipped with a few stock images and plugins. The problem with this kind of website is that they do not engage their audience. Nor do they give much value.
Making a WordPress site from a ready-made template and plugins isn’t as hard as it may sound. You can do this in a day or less, even without you knowing a thing about coding.
Most of these templates are designed to look good to the human eye but rarely deliver the much-needed custom experience. That is where a dedicated WordPress developer can help you get the job done right, from scratch, without any restrictions or limitations.
The biggest advantage? You will get a site that looks good and converts well. Hiring a developer will cost more money than buying a canned theme. But in the long run, you will get a perfect website that best represents your brand and will convert well for you.
That said, here are some of the reasons you might want to hire a dedicated WordPress developer:Â
1. Change Your Site’s Architecture
A dedicated WordPress developer can help you change the overall architecture of your site. By architecture, I don’t mean adding any new feature. What I mean is your site’s overall organization.
If you are on WordPress multisite or have multiple sites on the same domain, a developer can help you organize everything more efficiently.Â
That includes issues like pagination, navigation, menus, SEO, site responsiveness, user interface, etc.
2. Custom Design and Develop a Plugin
You can hire a dedicated WordPress developer to help you create a custom design for your website from scratch. Or, if you want to integrate a plugin, the developer can also help you with that too.
I’ve seen this happen so many times, where clients ask for a plugin, and I point them to Gravity Forms because it does all they need and more.
A WordPress developer can also help you develop a plugin from scratch. If you can’t find a plugin that does exactly what you want, then this is the only option left.
3. Fixing Issues
Since WordPress developers know the ins and outs of the system, they can spot bugs quickly and fix them.
Here are seven common WordPress issues you might run into:
- Parse Error/Syntax Error
- White Screen of Death (WSOD)
- Internal Server Error
- 100% CPU Usage
- Error Establishing a Database Connection
- AJAX errors in single-site installations
These are some of the issues that a dedicated WordPress developer can quickly spot and fix.
I’ve seen clients who have been trying to figure out why their site isn’t working for months without giving it to a dedicated expert.
They waste hours, sometimes days, trying to fix these issues themselves, only to realize later that the problem wasn’t as big as they thought: an experienced WordPress developer could have fixed it within minutes.
4. WordPress maintenance and updates:Â
WordPress updates are released regularly to fix exploits, bugs, and introduce new features. Although updating your site manually isn’t too difficult, there’s a whole lot that could go wrong.
