WordPress, the popular open-source CMS, turned app engine celebrated it’s 10 year anniversary on Monday, May 27th. The platform which begun as a fork of blogging platform b2/Cafelog has evolved over the last decade into the largest CMS in the world, powering over 18% of the web. As of today, WordPress has been downloaded 21,382,500 times, and more than 65 Million WordPress sites exist on the internet. In other words, when 1/5th of the internet chooses to build a website, they use WordPress to do it.
What started as a humble blogging service has matured over the past decade into a tool individuals, businesses, and brands use to manage content, engage their audiences, and connect with customers in new ways.
To celebrate WordPress’s birthday, the community around the platform hosted locally organized parties around the world. The WordPress Foundation encouraged local WordPress meetups to gather and celebrate on May 27th, and you can bet that Austin, the home WP Engine, went all out for our local celebration. Since WordPress was born in Houston, Texas, it’s only fitting that the state have one of the largest anniversary celebrations of WordPress.
We hosted the event on the beautiful second story patio of the Rattle Inn, overlooking upper 6th street. Thankfully the stormy weather cleared up just in time for our party and it was clear and sunny Texas skies. Attendees got to eat local Austin BBQ favorite Rudy’s brisket and sausage by the pound. Barbecue, plus a few drink tickets at the bar is a recipe for a great Memorial Day in Texas — and an amazing anniversary for WordPress.
Austin has an active WordPress Community, but we were blown away to have over 600 RSVP’s to the party. Since the venue could only hold 300, we were concerned about going over-capacity! Before the party started we already had a line wrapping around the block.
Long-standing WordPress community members like Brandon Kraft, Pat Ramsey, and Bill Erickson showed up, as well as dozens and dozens of new faces alike attended the event. There was of course one Austin’s local Automatticians, Jackie Dana, in attendance. WP Engine’s own Jason Cohen and Heather Brunner also enjoyed the evening, hanging out and mingling well after the sun went down.
There is nothing like sitting down eating some BBQ and drinking a beer over a conversation about WordPress. It doesn’t matter whether WordPress is your livelihood or creative outlet, we’re all part of the same community, and it was awesome to come together around an internet phenomenon like WordPress, and have barbecue together.
WordPress is more than just a tool to build a website or an online application. WordPress is a community of people, bloggers, and businesses, large and small. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and has different goals, but WordPress brings us together as a powerful tool empowering self-expression, entrepreneurship, and publishing. WordPress is also something we all contribute to, and own a small part of. WordPress exists as much on servers as it does in each individual who makes up the community.
On behalf of everyone at WP Engine, thanks to everyone who has contributed to the local Austin Community, and to the global WordPress Community. We can’t wait to see what the next decade of WordPress holds for us.
(To see the rest of our celebration photos head on over to WP Engine’s Facebook page.)
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