9 years ago marks the first release of WordPress. I remember downloading my first copy in 2004, not too long after the first release.
Since the last birthday of WordPress, we’ve seen some huge changes and events in and around WordPress. Here are just some of the highlights.
- The first launch of a WordPress App Store
- Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has a projected $45M USD for 2012
- WordPress took over as a dominating force, powering 49% of the top 100 blog on the web
- JetPack topped 1 million downloads
- We saw the release of WordPress 3.2 and WordPress 3.3
- WordPress classes are now being offered in colleges for course credit
- WordPress.com launched its own AdWords/AdSense competitor — WordAds
- The first print-version of a WordPress magazine was launched
The above is not even everything that happened in the past 12 months, so I’m really excited about the next 12 months of what WordPress has in store. We already can expect WordPress 3.4 to drop soon. Just as Mike Little notes, “WordPress is really maturing as a platform and an industry.” (Mike is one of the co-founding developers of WordPress)
Jonathan Dingman is a passionate blogger who loves writing about WordPress news, reporting on events, theme releases, awesome plugins, and more. He started using WordPress in 2004 and ran the first WordCamp NYC in 2008.