2003 founded Standing
cms · wordpress.org
WordPress
the moat is real
23 years 85 days and counting
Forked from b2/cafelog, 27 May 2003. The boring majority of the web.
Why it lasted
- It still runs a huge fraction of the public web, including the sites of people who mock it.
- The plugin economy is a jobs program. That many livelihoods will not migrate on a tweet.
- Gutenberg was supposed to split the community. The community complained and kept publishing.
Times it almost ended
- Movable Type's licensing shock in 2004 handed WordPress the bloggers. That was the original near-death of someone else.
- The 2024 Automattic / WP Engine war made the governance look brittle. The CMS kept serving pages.
What would finish it
- A default website that is not WordPress for small businesses (Squarespace, Webflow, a vibe-coded stack) finally showing up in the market-share line.
Questions
Is WordPress still up?
Yes, with a Standing verdict: the moat is real. Founded 2003.
How long has WordPress been around?
WordPress has been up since 2003-05-27.
Why did WordPress survive?
It still runs a huge fraction of the public web, including the sites of people who mock it.
Could WordPress still die?
A default website that is not WordPress for small businesses (Squarespace, Webflow, a vibe-coded stack) finally showing up in the market-share line.