5 years ago when I started Web Circle I did a bunch of research on which CMS to choose and decided on Joomla!.

For a year or so it was the CMS we used for pretty much every website and it was very sophisticated for what it could do at the time – particularly with the growing extensions directory. However as time went on and WordPress got better and better we gradually moved to using WordPress for most of our small business websites.

Since these days we focus predominantly on small business website design, WordPress has become the platform we use for the majority of our new sites (note we also still use Joomla!).

In 2006

In 2006 WordPress was seen mainly as a blogging tool and Joomla! was in my view the CMS with the most potential. I haven’t come across specific market share figures from the time but have a look at this Google Trends screenshot.

ABOVE: Screenshot showing 2006 Google searches – Joomla (blue) and WordPress (red)

There were some niggly things about each platform which people used to mention. The things about WordPress tended to be around it’s lack of flexibility in display, it’s focus mainly on blogging, limited menu capabilities etc. The Joomla issues were security and usability (particularly the way it separated menus and content items / articles).

So rewind to 2006, what did each platform need to do to win this race? There are a lot of complicating factors. One big one is WordPress managed to gain a huge foll0wing with it’s free hosted version WordPress.com – this no doubt propelled it’s uptake and spread the word particularly among DIY web builders (not so much developers).

But let’s just say the job of each system back then was pretty straight forward. Think of it like a business, you need to listen to your customers and give them what they want. So in other words, improve on the things that people don’t like about the system and make it so people do like it.

Both systems were free, both had a good market share and relatively equal potential to win this race.

Perhaps this is a simple view but let’s look at what happened.

The situation now

This chart shows Joomla! and WordPress searches over all years available.

ABOVE: Screenshot showing 2006 Google searches – Joomla! (blue) and WordPress (red)

In terms of Market Share, in the 2008 Water and Stone Open Source CMS Report Joomla! downloads were about 25% of WordPress downloads. In the 2010 report they were 11%. I’m guessing the 2011 report will show a similar trend.

Some reports show WordPress market share to be as high as 63%.

So what happened?

Let’s assume that both systems were actively going after this DIY or small business type market (it’s worth noting that Joomla! has a big uptake among Governments and Universities etc and we still use it a lot for more complicated sites). What has WordPress done since 2006 and what has Joomla! done?

First off WordPress has managed to shrug it’s blogging history by bringing out new and improved features that have made it into a great platform for non-blog type sites (growing extensions, better menu management etc). But it’s managed to do it while also winning the battle with Movable Type on the blog front – during a time where the popularity of blogging has exploded – further spreading the word to people who want a blog as part of their site or even to those who want other sites that aren’t blogs and grew to love the platform.

Joomla! on the other hand hasn’t really dealt with the issues that were common back in 2006. Note that Joomla! is an entirely community driven system which does make things challenging when competing in a space filled mostly with systems with commercial backing (like WordPress). However Joomla has improved a lot since 2006 with 2 major version releases and the uptake in some sectors like Government etc has been very good. But did they fix those niggly issues that existed back in 2006? Let’s break it down.

1. Security

The main problem with security in Joomla! is not that the system is less secure than other systems. The problem is that when new versions come out, it’s a pain in the backside to upgrade the system. First of all you don’t even really know that the system is out of date (how hard would it be to put a notification up the top like WordPress does) but secondly the process for patching Joomla! is one that a web developer has to do – and even a web developer will take a while to do it. WordPress on the other hand can all be done by the site owner with a couple of clicks.

So even with the latest version of Joomla! Small business owners who are using it find it hard to (a) know when it needs to be patched and (b) to do the patching.

And this is just with minor version releases – the major version releases are literally all over the place.

Easy solution – Here is a super easy solution that Joomla! could have implemented 5 years ago – Make sites check for the latest version and if they become out of date display a message up the top that says the site is at risk and the website owner needs to speak with their web developer to upgrade the site. This would have been a couple of lines of code. Magento does it (in fact they pop it up right in your face and force you to acknowledge it) – WordPress does it while at the same time offering a 1-click upgrade option.

Better solution – I don’t know how complicated doing the 1-click patching is, a lot of systems don’t work this way  but WordPress seem to have managed to make it work. In my experience putting this back in control of the site owner is going to reduce the amount of out of date sites by a huge margin – especially combined with the messaging above which is exactly how WordPress manages to do it (I note the new Joomla! 1.7 this functionality is available).

And with Major version releases I don’t know where to start. Do we need them? Can we not just improve something incrementally. If we do need them then I would suggest not bringing out a major version release until you have a simple upgrade path that is part of the core (not relying on 3rd party extensions) and something that steps through the process and automates it (for example files and replaces references in templates etc). No doubt this isn’t easy but major upgrades are a real thorn in Joomla!’s side.

2. Ease of use

Ease of use is a very important factor in the small business community. I’ve heard a lot of Joomla! site owners say they were looking forward to Joomla! 1.6 because the old version was hard to use. I heard the same things about 1.5 but the truth is neither release was really any easier to use than the original Joomla 1.

One of the main issues I see with the usability of Joomla! is the weird way it separates menus and pages. Small business owners see websites as comprised of pages – they always have. Joomla sees articles and sees menus as ways to link to articles. So the intuitive process for adding a page to a website you would think would be to log into the CMS, click on add a page, add the page and click Save. This would create the page and add a link to the main menu. On top of this you would need to have the ability to exclude pages from menus.

One CMS I have seen do this very well is a system called SilverStripe. How WordPress manages menus now goes close enough to re-producing this. But even after 5 years in Joomla! to create a new page you need to create an ‘Article’ (note changing the older terminology from content item to article didn’t help – as I say small business owners see them as pages). Then after creating the Article you need to go to a totally different section, find the menu that the site uses (hopefully there aren’t too many as there often are) and then create a link through to the article. And still even finding out how to link through to an article is not easy! it’s as hard as it was when I tried to do it as a web developer in 2006 for the first time and couldn’t work it out.

There are still people in the Joomla! forum asking how they can create a page.

Easy Solution – This is something I thought of 5 years ago when I first started using Joomla! that they could have easily done at any stage. Have Joomla! by default set to ‘automated menu’ mode – or at least force people to choose when they set it up. In automated menu mode there would be a top menu in the site which automatically listed very page (or article, or content item if they want to call it that). Surely this wouldn’t be that hard – even thrown in an option in the pages to not publish them in the menu. This would not impact on their ability to service larger sites because it would be a setting that could easily be turned off.

Better solution – To me the architecture of Joomla! has always been a bit strange. To me a better approach would be for the site owner to create a ‘page’ and on this page they could have the option to have a few different ‘layouts’ (it would default to the default specified by the template). Then once the page is created they could click on the various regions provided (regions would be specified in the template like they currently are) and they could choose what goes in each region. For example click the main region and enter text / HTML with an editor or choose to have it as a list of articles (and provide the ability to create these articles on the fly). And then click on the right column and add some text / HTML or choose from some inbuilt display modules.

This would effectively make Joomla! a different system but to me this is an entirely more logical way to go and it would very much support simple small business sites but could also be scaled to bigger sites like the current system can.

What is the message

To me the message in this is really clear and it’s about listening to your customers. The issues that were holding Joomla! back in 2006 are holding them back now and meanwhile WordPress have stamped out their issues and excelled at exactly those things that were problems for Joomla!

Joomla! continued improving but they didn’t improve in the areas that their customers wanted. At least not their small business customers.

WordPress listened, they didn’t want to be known as a blogging platform only – they made it easy – and they won.

What does the future hold

I really believe both systems have the potential to be prominent in the small business space moving forward. WordPress is here to stay and whether it has beaten Joomla! in this market yet it is certainly well on the way. Is it possible for Joomla! to claw back into this space and reverse the trend. For one thing the challenge now is huge.

Not only do they have to improve the things that customers want improved but that along will not be enough. That alone won’t reverse the trend against WordPress they are going to have to also innovate and come up with ways of doing things that WordPress can’t. And that is not going to be easy.

About the author: Dan Norris

Dan Norris runs Australian web design firm, A Website Designer. Dan is passionate about helping small business owners succeed online using WordPress.

Not only will this version of WordPress be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 and requiring a minimum of PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5, but it will be introducing distraction free writing, a new Dashboard, Twenty Eleven, and an expanded Admin Bar.

Which feature are you looking forward to the most?

The riskiest software used by websites in 2010 was the popular blogging platform WordPress. Tens of thousands of un-patched WordPress blogs were used by cybercriminals for various schemes, primarily as part of redirection chains that led to various malware attacks or other blackhat search engine optimization (SEO)-related schemes.

I beg to differ. While WordPress certainly made the headlines this year as webhost after webhost became the target of attacks, in most instances, it was discovered that the webhost was to blame as was the case with Network Solutions earlier in 2010. Since WordPress hosted sites appeared to be the ones most targeted, the webhost would immediately place the blame on WordPress itself, a theme or a plugin causing news to spread that WordPress indeed had a security vulnerability which was not the case. All security vulnerabilities discovered in the WordPress software during 2010 were quickly patched and released to the community. Which is why the following is no big shock to anyone with common sense:

Tens of thousands of unpatched WordPress blogs

Un-patched anything is going to be attacked. If Trend Micro wanted to give their statement validity, they would have explained that WordPress is the most popular publishing platform in use across the web and because of that large market share, it is a big target for malicious users. It’s the same reason Microsoft Windows is constantly under attack. However, by keeping your WordPress software up to date along with any themes or plug-ins in use, using a good web-host (note that I’ll be discussing this in more detail in a follow up post/guide) and routinely backing up your entire website, you should have no problems sleeping at night.

First, a little history on the semantics of the market. The word Premium was a term used about two years ago to define a theme that carried a price tag and contained some additional features and enhancements you wouldn’t normally find in a free theme. This lead to the question, What Is A Premium Theme? Premium was and always has been a marketing term. It’s funny because in the commercial theme market today, the rage is centered around theme frameworks. While theme developers in the WordPress community grabbed a hold of this term and gave it their own definition, we once again found ourselves wondering what a theme framework was, is, or could be. It seems though that the term has been delegated once again to a marketing term. I once referred to premium themes as those that you had to pay for but soon after, decided to simply call all paid themes commercial since after all, that’s what they are. So when James mentions that premium is going away and has also become outdated, those two points I agree with.

If your someone who is itching to dive into the commercial theme market place, now is as good a time as ever to get involved. The WordPress platform is leading the pack while the user-base is continuously growing. Millions of people use the self hosted version of WordPress and there are still a bunch of business opportunities that can be tapped into. If you’re worried about exposure in order to turn into a profitable business, don’t be. Sites like ThemeGarden, ThemeForest, and child theme market places are a great way to help individual designers/developers get the ball rolling. After proving yourself and establishing a following, you’ll be able to spring board off the shoulders of those theme marketplaces to do it on your own. It may seem like the market for commercial themes is crowded, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not. One of the things I’ve personally noticed is the increasing amount of emails I receive from new or not widely known commercial theme developers launching their own products, wanting me to write a review for them. This is a good sign of a healthy marketplace.

In the beginning, I think commercial theme authors should try to focus on one product and excelling with that product. A great example is the Headway theme. HeadwayThemes.com is a business built on and around one theme, a theme that is an excellent product. Their focus is not spread amongst 20 or 30 themes in their repository but with just one. Because of their focus on creating a stellar product, they have been able to make a successful business out of it. However, I realize that at some point, a business will need to expand and diversify in order to create multiple streams of revenue. As a side note to the whole discussion of business and commercial themes, how does a commercial theme company diversify it’s product offerings while maintaining the level of support and satisfaction their users have come to love with just the initial product?

At the end of the day, WordPress is a giant pie and while WooThemes, StudioPress and a few others have considerable chunks of the pie, there is enough left over for many of the independent developers out there. Just remember that as the WordPress pie gets larger, so does the number of opportunities.

None of the people involved in the discussion is a lawyer so keep that in mind when reading through the ticket. However, a good alternative to the situation was published by NKuttler which replaced the lyrics of Hello Dolly with the Free Software Song. As noted by core contributor Mark Jaquith, Matt is aware of the situation and has good lawyers at his disposal for legal counsel on the issue if he wants to pursue that.

After reading the fair use doctrine and reading through the discussion within the ticket, let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Water and Stone used Amazon.com to determine who has the largest number of books in print, which systems have been the subject of publishing activity in the last 12 months, and which systems are currently the subject of books yet to be printed. While I knew WordPress had a big year in terms of books available, I had no idea how many books there were.

Book Publishers Love WordPress

The other thing I found interesting in this report is their metric of search engine ranking. Water and Stone used the following keywords in Google, Yahoo! and Bing to see which systems made it in the top 30 results: content management system, open source content management systems, open source cms, cms, web cms, web content management system.

WordPress comes in near the bottom of the list. Based on previous market share reports, this is a statistic that has been a weakness for the project. W&S attributes this to the lack of SEO that has gone into the WordPress.org project website.

If you don’t feel like browsing through the entire report which I highly recommend, the conclusion based on the survey results is that WordPress is the market leader. Water and Stone attributes the success of WordPress in 2010 to the release of WordPress 3.0, the continued popularity of WordPress.com and the growing awareness that WordPress can be used for more than just blogging.

A Few Questions I Have:

When reading this survey and others like it, the trend is to see Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress at the top of the list with (insert CMS here) coming in a distant fourth. Why are those three open-source content management systems in the position that they are? Most of the other systems in the survey are small potatoes. I don’t know the goal of each project but what would it take for any of them to become the next WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal? Obviously, there are many aspects that go into a successful open-source CMS or project in general but what is it that the top three have that the others don’t?

There was a time when pinging specific websites after new content had been published would allow that content to be indexed faster instead of going by a web crawling schedule, the ping would notify the crawler to come early and index the new content. Search engines like Google are so fast at indexing new content on the web, I think the benefits of pinging have gone out the window.

While the benefits of pinging are negligible, I happened to take a look at the Ping-O-Matic stats page (it hasn’t worked in months) and was surprised to see a graph showing the number of pings sent. So far for the month of December, the site has sent over 167 million pings. Since by default, the Ping-O-Matic list is used on new installs of WordPress, WordPress.com generated blogs and is able to be used by non WordPress using websites, the number is not that surprising. So while there are still a number of sites sending out Pings, I highly doubt it’s because of any benefits the site owner would receive for doing so. It doesn’t hurt to leave the ping list in tact which is what I recommend doing until all ping servers bite the dust.

There are a number of things that come up during the article that are worthy of discussion.

I used to get about $100-200/month in the way of donations through my website. Unfortunately due to changes in the way plugins are presented on WordPress.org that has dried up to about $5/month.

While that quote may look like Alex King is looking to rake in some money via donations, the truth is, the Plugin pages have been redesigned and the donation link is now housed within the FYI box with a tiny blue link. If I remember correctly, the donation link used to be in a more visual location to the point where you couldn’t miss it. So I think Alex is on to something here.

Some plugin developers feel as though they have been screwed over thanks to this change and rightfully so but I have to question why it really bothers them. If those plugin developers were counting on those donations as a means of making a living, then there expectations were already off base. If you want to make a living, you better charge for support or for access to your plugin via an API key. If we eliminate that reason, what reason is left to be so upset at the redesign? Something else to keep in mind is that WordPress.org is not responsible for ensuring the success of your business, whatever that business may be. That’s up to you.

WordPress best practices evolve with each release, and plugins written properly just a few short years ago are badly outdated as a result. We’ve invested a significant about of money in this effort, and I honestly don’t expect to receive anything back from it.

Alex said a word that I think is at the crux of the situation most of the time and that is, EXPECTATION. If the expectation is to be a millionaire thanks to donations, you’re going to be disappointed and think the WordPress community sucks at giving. However, if you have the expectation that your plugin solves a problem that many other users are having and you’ll get nothing in return, well that’s a much better starting point.

David asked Alex a very interesting question that presented an equally interesting answer. David asked Alex if the thanks and appreciation go anywhere near compensating the constant e-mail asking for support? What inspires his desire to give without return?

I actually feel strongly that the current situation is unsustainable. Unless the WordPress community at large starts to better recognize and reward the developers that create the tools that they use and rely on, the developers won’t/can’t continue to provide as they have.

In talking with other plugin developers, it seems fairly universal that the reward for a successful plugin is a deluge of support email that includes the worst kind of sense of entitlement, rudeness and ignorance. The community as a whole seems to expect to be able to pay nothing, yet received expert and individual help and support for free.

Well, we have ThanksGiving where often times, fans of WordPress and the plugins they use are given thanks in a blog post with links and sometimes donations. January 28th is thank a plugin developer day although there was a lack of a blog post about it in 2010. Then there is the donation to your favorite plugin developer day (March 1st.) Last but not least, plugin authors received some cash during the run of Donate Friday that I participated in for a few weeks. All of these efforts with the exception of Matt declaring a new holiday were community driven.

I take a bit of personal issue with the fact that I participated in those programs voluntarily but I still have to somehow recognize and reward those developers. There are a large handful of developers where the best reward they could have is seeing users happily solving their problems with code they wrote. Sometimes, I wonder if plugin developers would be happy if I gave them my first-born or would they then request the second child as well? I completely understand that saying thank you does not pay the bills but come on! What do you want from me!?

I do agree with Alex regarding his sentiments on the deluge of support emails, the rudeness of people coupled with ignorance. What Alex mentioned was pretty much the basis behind one of the most popular posts written for WLTC asking whether WordPress Was A Thankless Community? What a great discussion that was had in the comments! Unfortunately, from my talks with various plugin authors, not much has changed since then.

I think the mentality that everything that is built on or around WordPress should be free because WordPress is free will quickly erode, especially since more and more commercial plugins are being created. My hope is that at some point, users can understand that support as well as upgrades are two of the most valuable assets to a plugin and that sometimes, they are most certainly worth paying for. I remember Matt being quoted as saying “The best things in life are free“. I have a hard time going along with that as some of the best things in my life I have ended up paying for, without regret.

In Closing:

Alex King doesn’t know the answer to the problem of rude, ignorant, just plain obnoxious people and I don’t either. Considering the vast user base that encompasses WordPress, is that particular problem even solvable? Should everyone that uses WordPress or any one of the plugins available for it be forced to go through some sort of ethics or politeness training? I bet many would love to see that idea come to fruition but it’s a pipe dream. I just don’t see how Matt Mullenweg or any other individual could solve this problem. Hell, I don’t even think the WordPress community itself can 100% solve the problem.

As I mentioned, Alex’s post provides a lot to chew on. In the comments, I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the questions and perplexing problems that were brought up throughout the post. I’m also interested in hearing from individuals that would like to explain what their motivations are for contributing to something like WordPress or open-source in general.

This one example has me wondering how many users out there are experiencing something similar with a WordPress plugin? In the example I described above, I could take screenshots of the polls that contain the poll data and substitute that for the poll ID but that’s too much of a hassle. I could also not care about the loss of polling data but that would end up making a handful of posts which have a great discussion surrounding the results irrelevant.

Over the course of 2 years, I’ve managed to have 32 activated plugins on my website, each with a particular role. Some add features, others work in the background to make things easier. Yet, I use a few plugins that either alter the way my content is displayed or enables additional content that if those plugins were removed, the content would be removed as well.

I’m all for plugins being able to have an uninstall feature that removes them entirely from WordPress, including the database but in this instance, I want to keep the content associated with the plugin while removing everything else. Any suggestions on how to do this? Better yet, what would a plugin author have to do to make sure that the content generated by the plugin is stored in WordPress and not somewhere else? It seems to me that the last-ditch option and the one that may be most convenient is to not do anything at all. Pretend the polling plugin is not there and hope it continues to work into the future as I continually upgrade WordPress. This leads me to my next question.

How many of you have come to rely on a particular plugin for your website. A plugin that you considered to be a crucial part of the way your site functions only to see that plugin disappear, stop working, or development ceased. What did you end up doing? I realize there are a ton of WordPress plugins in the repository but some plugins are harder to replace than others. Let me know in the comments.

True/Slant was also about the author — just as Forbes has been for 93 years. At T/S, easy-to-use WordPress tools enabled our contributors to do what they loved to do: create content. They freely self-published 100 to 125 posts a day, sometimes more.

When you stop to take a look at the development of WordPress over the past few years, it’s hard to argue that most of the improvements have NOT been centered around the author. Just a few author specific features that have occurred recently are: Post Revisions, continually improving media management system, Quickpress, word count, quick edit, reply to comments from the back-end, and although not directly in the core of WordPress itself, the acquisition of After The Deadline. As Matt was quoted in the article, even their acquisitions deal with the author. It’s this dedication that has propelled WordPress to be the most popular publishing platform in use today. Yes, there are other factors that go into the popularity of WordPress but I’d say the ease of use along with the ease of publishing content is a large majority of its popularity.

Strictly from an authors point of view, what makes WordPress a better publishing system than Drupal, Joomla or a myriad of other systems?

To clarify the split GPL license, Chris Pearson adds, “the PHP is GPLv2 and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary.” Specifically, this means that Thesis no longer violates the GPL of WordPress and the several plugins that Thesis was based on. Matt Mullenweg was thrilled to hear the news, replying with, “Now, back to work. This has taken a lot of my time over the past few days and was going to consume more if it went forward.”

It is unknown if this will have any affect on Mr. Pearson’s business.  While the split GPL license now allows the core of Thesis be redistributed by a third-party either free or for a fee, the rest of Thesis is still protected and would therefore require extensive work to redistribute anything like it.  In addition to the proprietary portions of Thesis, Mr. Mullenweg mentioned in the original debate that Thesis is “more than just a code and a theme; it is the forums, the support, the community, and all the things around it that make it valuable. That is not something that someone in another country selling it for half-price is going to be able to duplicate because they don’t have you.”

About a month ago I posted about how fast WordPress 3.0 was being downloaded and there was a terrific discussion about the sheer amount of data that was being grabbed to get at the 3.0 version of WordPress.  We even had some comments as to why it was being downloaded at that scale.

Well as of today the download counter reads that it has been downloaded just over 10.3 million times since it was released last month and the counter keeps rolling along!

So what is it that makes the WordPress platform so popular?  What is it that drives people to download it over 10 million times?

If you had the opportunity to talk to a non WordPress user what would you tell them about it to show that it is worth downloading and putting to use for a website?

What is your favorite thing about WordPress?  What is your least favorite thing about it?  What would you add to it?

The experience of this community is the perfect forum to start a dialog like this so I am looking forward to seeing everyone’s thoughts.

Many of you reading this blog and probably who don’t read this too might have a blog, where you write rich and unique content and probably also have copyrights on the content. It could be licensed copyrights or some sort of Creative Commons. Nevertheless, you might also have a terms of use which dictates how others can use your content.

Now, this world is full of sploggers and there is no way you can stop that. But when it comes to your own blog you will tend to take some action against people who copy your content. This action could be politely asking them to stop copying your content, threatening them to stop using your content and last but not the least taking legal action against them by filing a DMCA complaint or using other means through the court of justice.

Now, when it comes to our own problems, our own content, we would contemplate to do everything in our means to stop people from using what is rightfully ours. But when someone violates a license or any license, in this case the GPL license of the software we use, we turn a blind eye or say it is not really what it says?

Let me make one thing clear here. I am not a GPL fan, I personally prefer to use the Apache 2.0 license. However, I also prefer to respect licenses I use and not violate them.

Update: I also wanted to add some API related stuff which people are arguing against. Your blog has a RSS feed, which is essentially a way to access content from your blog without actually using any of your blog’s resources (almost ), and those RSS feeds eventually end up being used by the so called sploggers. However, at that point of time we don’t really want to think how they accessed our content and want them to adhere to our TOS and other licensing usage. Right? Right? Right?

I am seriously not against anyone, this is a real-life situation I wanted to put everyone into before making decisions about what is actually right or wrong. After this, the choice is yours.

We have discussed about exploring GPL and the risks through a lengthy article in the past and whether it is a viable model or not. Though the fight is not about using GPL or not, it is about how the products can make use of code which make use of the GPL license.

Matt has argued that GPL Licensing terms state that if you use a product with a GPL licensing, you have to distribute it with a GPL license too, however, this is not happening with the Thesis theme. Matt is not wrong here, because Thesis cannot exist without WordPress and it extensively uses a lot of code from the WordPress core, for example actions, hooks and more.

Though I am not siding anyone here, I do feel that if a licensing states that you have to adhere to certain things, you should technically and ethically stick to them. What is your take on this issue? Were you aware of it? If not you might want to check a detailed post on The Next Web about the issue here.

Further Reads: More about GPL license here and the GPLv2 license which WordPress uses here.

Actually this should not be a big surprise for those of us who frequent sites like this to see that the latest version of WordPress is moving out the door at this kind of pace.

If you want to watch the parade of downloads then you should check out this site:

http://wordpress.org/download/counter/

Personally I do not remember a similar download counter on past versions but that does not mean it did not exist.  Maybe someone from WordPress can comment on how this versions download pace compares to past updates. I think that would be interesting to know and compare.

I grabbed this screenshot at 8:20 AM EDT just to give you a frame of reference

I did some very rough calculations and watched the counter for 60 seconds to get an idea of just how fast those downloads are happening:

• 50 downloads per minute
• 3,000 downloads per hour
• 72,000 downloads per day
• 504,000 downloads per week

Taking those numbers it translates to this type of bandwidth (based on a 2.2 MB download for WordPress 3.0):

• 110 MB per minute
• 6.6 GB per hour
• 158.4 GB per day
• 1.11 TB per week

And just in case your curious that continues out to:

• 4.44 TB per month
• 53.28 TB per year

I think those are amazing numbers and a testament to the quality of work and ease of use that WordPress provides us everyday folks for creating quality websites.

By the way – in the time it has taken me to write this posting the counter has now moved up to:

Please make sure you stop by Keith Dsouza’s post from yesterday about WordPress 3.0 and share your thoughts about what you have found in this latest update to the WordPress blogging platform.

Welcome back Keith!