August 1

The Future is Here – How WordPress is Evolving

Matt Mullenweg said this in November of 2015: “We can now say about one in four websites are now powered by the scrappy open source underdog with its roots stretching all the way back to a single person in Corsica, France. We should be comfortably past 25% by the end of the year.” Now check out the above statistics (taken fresh out from W3Techs.com) and tell me he was wrong. [On a related note: The person in Corsica, France by the way is Michel Valdrighi, creator of b2/cafelog.] Mullenweg sounded confident in his State of the Word address in WordCamp 2015 about WordPress’ growth in the massive 56% untapped market share of the web which is still not using any recognizable CMS.

But WordPress growth in numbers isn’t limited to sites using it or the recent acquisition of WooThemes (and WooCommerce) by Automattic. WordPress has been evolving before our very eyes, and at this point in time its growth stats can boast of:

1. Plugins evolving into SaaS

Mullenweg reported that total downloads of plugins from WordPress.org repository crossed a 1 billion, which says a lot about the years ahead.

In the year 2015 alone, the plugin repository saw an addition of over 9,000 plugins. With the rather easy submission guidelines, WP users’ trust in the directory, and the opportunity for developers to showcase freemium-plugin models of their many SaaS and online tools, the plugin repository will only continue to grow, perhaps at an even accelerated pace. Examples are already there, with Joost de Valk’s Yoast, Pippin Williamson’s Easy Digital Downloads, and the Envato Market’s Power Elite Wall-of-fame which is usually always plastered with WordPress developers.

2.JSON REST API for greater adaptability

The December 2015 marked a significant change in WordPress’ evolution trajectory where it finally embraced RESTful APIs in the core. Although the move is only half done (Phase II of RESTful API integration is scheduled to roll out in April 2016 with the next major version upgrade), the entire community is already testing the implications and limits of JavaScript-driven, API powered interfaces with high-performance hybrid apps for mobile and accessibility-ready interfaces.

With an entire web-ful of 3^rd party tools and services that can now be integrated in WordPress, it has taken a leap forward to become a fully fledged application framework, primed for development and scalability to meet just about any requirement. Talking about leaving the past behind…

3. The Sheer Force of Developer geniuses present at WordCamp 2015

More than 1800+ WordPress developers made their way to Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown for US WordCamp 2015. Globally speaking, over 600 organizers made 89 WordCamps happen in 34 countries; combined attendance for which went past 21,000 people. WordPress is primed for growth: There’s never been a more exciting time in the history of the platform. WordPress is finally achieving the technology ambition: ready to become exactly what you need it to be. Author Bio: Lucy Barret is working for a WordPress Development Company, HireWPGeeks Ltd. She is there as a PSD to WordPress developer and handles all major projects along with her team of developers. Writing blogs is her passion and whenever she gets free time, she enjoys reading and writing articles. You can follow her company, HireWPGeeks on Facebook.