A Look at The Past, Present and Future of WordPress (Infographic)

WordPress users don’t know how good they have it. As one of the most popular content management systems, the good old WP powers over 26% of all websites on the internet. It’s hard to believe that it’s also a free program that’s still open source after all this time. The best part? It’s not going anywhere.

Today we’re going to look at the beginnings of WordPress, followed by an infographic that outlines its incredible rise to glory.

The Beginnings of a Legend: The Origin of WordPress

The history of WordPress tells the story of how a community came together to contribute to an open source program and make it something truly great. It all started when a blogging software called b2/cafelog was discontinued by the main developers, leaving the community stranded.

In 2003, two users of the software named Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, decided to build their own platform as a fork of b2/cafelog. The first version of WordPress was released in May of 2003. It was based on b2, but it had a lot of improvements.

Things like an admin interface, new templates, and generated XHTML 1.1 compliant templates were big news for the time. It was a small beginning, but it would soon give way to things like plugins the following year, and eventually the WordPress we know and love today.

The Timeline of WordPress (Infographic)

It’s time to see where all of this started. Today, WordPress hosts all manner of websites and themes for everyone from bloggers, to real estate agents and more. Check out the infographic below and let us know what you like most about the history of WordPress in the comments!