World's most popular blogging platform, WordPress turns 10

The open-source blogging platform and content management system (CMS), WordPress is ten years old now. A success story in its own right, WordPress has gone

Nishtha Kanal|May 28, 2013, 09:24:34 IST

The open-source blogging platform and content management system (CMS), WordPress is ten years old now. A success story in its own right, WordPress has gone from being a simple blogging platform to an extremely helpful tool for building websites and enabling communication across the web, in the past decade.

Fathered by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, WordPress started off as a blogging platform b2/cafelog. The service now powers 18 percent of the Internet, thanks to its CMS capabilities. Using WordPress anyone can modify designs and themes on their site as well as add third-party plug-ins.

Happy birthday, WordPress

The service being open source is one of its greatest advantages. One need not seek permission before going about implementing newly developed features. There is no wonder then, that WordPress is the most commonly used CMS.

Mullenweg wrote a little love letter to the platform he created, commemorating ten years of its existence. “You were cute before you became beautiful. Wearing black and white, afraid of color, trying to be so unassuming…You showed the world you were growing up, and how much you cared about design and typography and other platonic ideals. You knew that open source didn’t have to be homely. I stretched myself too thin trying to get you there, and I did a stupid thing to pay for it. I hurt you, but instead of casting me away you held me closer, supported me, gave me another chance,” an emotional Mullenweg wrote.

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The platform is now more than just a simple blogging tool or CMS. The service based on PHP and MySQL powers about 60 million websites around the world. It also runs several shopping websites as well as nearly 17 percent of the world's top one million websites.

Here’s to the world’s most popular blogging system. We hope to see you be a part of blogging’s changing face in the next decade or so.

By Nishtha Kanal

Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.