When Matt first announced WordPress, we picked up a domain around it and built the first WordPress based site in Turkish. It was nowhere near this comprehensive in those first releases, and as you would expect it had plenty of holes in it. But; people took to it. Against rivals like PHP-Nuke and Joomla, it offered a far more stable off the shelf CMS.
Providing the infrastructure for 50% of the world’s internet is a serious achievement.
WordPress Today
WordPress.com is the only service of its kind that not only lets you export your data, but gives you an open source package you can run on pretty much any web host out there to run your own instance of the software. So the freedom is really in your hands.
Matt Mullenweg
But; it is hard to say the platform is anywhere near ideal in 2024. There are a lot of incompatibilities, and an AI WordPress code specialist has still not been built into the system. What does that mean in practice? You open a site, your host allocates you 1 GB of RAM, and you install WordPress on, say, PHP 8.1.
- Whether WordPress works with your PHP version
- Whether your theme works with that PHP version
- Whether every one of your plugins works with that PHP version
All of that comes into play, and the site slows down. WordPress will burn through the resources of a site allocated 1 GB of RAM without a second thought. And if you are running minification through a page speed plugin on top of that, 1 GB of RAM cannot carry the work, so the site you expected to speed up can end up slower.
Quick fix: make sure your site has 2 GB of RAM, run the latest PHP version, and check that your plugins and themes are compatible with it.
An Automatic Renewal Algorithm for WordPress
By 2029 WordPress will check every plugin added to the system through a “WordPress code specialist AI” and fix the code automatically for the new WordPress and PHP versions. After that point we will stop running into the problems we have today.
The WordPress Timeline
2001-2003: The Opening Years
– 2001: the b2/cafelog blogging software is developed by Michel Valdrighi
– 2003 (January): Matt Mullenweg writes a blog post about b2/cafelog’s development coming to a halt
– 2003 (May): WordPress 0.7 is released by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little
2004-2005: Early Growth
– 2004: WordPress 1.0 “Miles” is released (SEO friendly permalinks, support for multiple categories)
– 2004: the plugin system is introduced
– 2005: the WordPress themes system and the admin panel are added
– 2005: WordPress.com goes live
2006-2010: Scale and Popularity
– 2006: WordPress 2.0 is released (WYSIWYG editor, improved admin panel)
– 2007: the WordCamp events begin
– 2008: WordPress 2.7 brings automatic updates and a new admin interface
– 2009: WordPress 2.8 improves widget management
– 2010: WordPress 3.0 is released (custom menus, custom post types, multisite)
2011-2015: Modernization and New Ideas
– 2011: the JetPack bridge between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is set up
– 2012: WordPress 3.5 introduces the new media manager
– 2013: WordPress 3.8 brings a responsive admin panel
– 2014: WordPress 4.0 delivers an improved media and writing experience
– 2015: WordPress 4.2 adds emoji support and the Press This feature
– 2015: the WordPress REST API project starts
2016-2020: The Next Generation of WordPress
– 2016: the WordPress.com VIP platform is redesigned
– 2017: WordPress 4.8 adds improved widgets and a link editor
– 2018: WordPress 5.0 and the Gutenberg block editor are released
– 2019: WordPress 5.3 brings improved accessibility and a new default theme
– 2020: WordPress 5.5 adds automatic updates and site health checks
2021 to Now: WordPress for the Modern Web
– 2021: WordPress 5.8 takes the first steps toward full site editing
– 2022: WordPress 6.0 adds style variations and better block theme features
– 2023: WordPress 6.2 delivers site editor improvements and new navigation components
– 2024: the WordPress ecosystem keeps its focus on headless CMS setups and integration with modern web technologies
As you can see from this timeline, WordPress ships something significant every year. Our piece on WordPress SEO settings may interest you too.
