WordPress is ten years old. It’s been wildly successful and that’s putting it mildly. To celebrate, MarketPress released an interesting infographic. I think the most amazing figure mentioned here is the amount of code that has gone into WordPress. It’s over 200 thousand lines, which they estimate to equate to about 52 years worth of programming. Fifty-two years. Not only is that a testament to the sheer power of open source collaboration, it underlines just how valuable WordPress is as a tool. When you install a free copy of WordPress, you are using software worth millions and millions. I think that’s awesome.
In ten years, WordPress has come a long way. I think one of the most exciting things for me was the increased support for custom post types and taxonomies (strangely omitted from the infographic). I remember when I started my first blog in 2007 on WP 2.1 and was trying to integrate it with a forum software. That’s a 1 minute job these days and I spent weeks trying to figure that one out at the time. It was fun though and getting my hands dirty with code kindled my passion for WordPress and website development. It’s like building with Lego and I love it. With my 6 and a half years’ worth of experience, WordPress still feels fresh to me and I still love learning new things about it.
I expect great things from WordPress going forward, I can only see it growing forward. Future looks bright.