WordPress is the most popular website builder on the Internet today. Nearly one third of all websites are built using the platform and if you have a website from Nicely Done Sites chances are yours was too. WordPress has made webbuilding easy to do allowing novices to build their own site and for more advanced users to build websites that can rival those of the big boys.
The Beginnings Pre 2010
WordPress was started in 2003. It is hard to believe but if WordPress was a human it would legally be able to drive a car now. Two web bloggers found that their existing blogging software was going to be discontinued and so they decided to build their own on top of that software. WordPress was first released to the open source community on May 27, 2003. Plugin availability was added the following year and themes came the year after. WordPress has seen continuous development ever since and web development has never been the same.
Early 2010s
When 2010 came around the first major change was that version 3.0 was released. This version introduced several new features like custom post types, better custom taxonomies, custom backgrounds, headers and menus. It also came with Twenty Ten, a new default theme that has become a tradition of a new default theme that is added each year, except for 2018 which was never developed due to the extensive work that went into WordPress 5. Twenty Twenty was added in late 2019.
The following year post formats and the admin bar were added in addition to some powerful new plugins that helped to open up the world of ecommerce. The world of ecommerce has made WordPress one of the most powerful platforms on the planet and it is no surprise to see why it has become so popular.
Every year since has seen new additions to the program that you have come to know (and hopefully love). The theme customizer and a new media manager that allowed users to create image galleries was introduced in 2012. In 2013 WordPress became the most popular Content Management System in the world. That year the interface that you have come to expect was introduced.
Mid 2010s
2014 saw the introduction of the visual post editor, which allowed users to drag and drop images directly into it. Users could also edit images, see gallery previews, access to live widget previews and audio playlists. WordPress 4 was released later that year and WordPress was gaining popularity around the world as downloads of non-English versions of the software exceeded English downloads.
Emoji support was added in 2015 as was a theme customizer and the infrastructure for WordPress REST API. That year WordPress acquired WooCommerce. Streamlined updated for plugins and themes were introduced in 2016 as was a custom css feature. At the end of that year HTTPS was also actively supported. 2017 added the ability to add audio, video and more.
Late 2010s
2018 saw the release of WordPress 5 and its new block editor known as Gutenberg in one of the most sweeping changes to the software in the decade. It was met with some controversy and some backlash from the community as many people were not ready or open to a major change like that. Some new features were very popular as it was able to copy and paste cleanly from Google Docs and in the end the furor died down. It is commonly said that Central Pennsylvanians don’t like change but it might not be just us.
This past year saw the introduction of the site health monitor as well as PHP error protection for the site, which will prevent a fatal error to the site and an autosave function so nothing will be lost when editing the site.
WordPress today in 2020 is quite different than what it was in 2010. Do you think that the developers foresaw how popular their creation would be at this time or did they think that it would even be around? And what do you think WordPress will look like when we hit 2030? Considering how far it has come in the past decade with new features that we now take for granted, it is exciting to think what could be in store for it in the next decade.
WordPress has made web development easier and more accessible to the masses. It has allowed anyone to engage in ecommerce and potentially sell their wares around the world. Or it has allowed anyone and everyone to be able to promote their business or themselves. While WordPress is not the only CMS system available it is the most popular and if you have used it, we hope that you see why that is. Just remember to keep your WordPress site updated so that you can get the latest updates and features!