Once upon a time, there was a blogging platform called b2/cafelog, whose developers stopped working on it. Two of its users, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, created WordPress as a new platform on top of b2/cafelog.
The first WordPress version saw the light of day on May 27, 2003. The community was delighted by it because it had quite a few improvements on Cafelog. It included new templates and a new admin interface.
This article will detail the history of the world’s most popular content management system since it was created in 2023 to the present day. For a step-by-step guide on how to use the system, here is an informative WordPress tutorial.
2004: Version 1.2
A year later, version 1.2 appeared with plugin architecture. It allowed developers and users to extend WordPress functionality by adding their own plugins.
Version 1.5 appeared with a new theme system, comment moderation tools, and Pages in February 2005. Then came 2.0 with a new admin dashboard in December. It was completely different from WordPress’s old admin screens, using DHTML and JavaScript to improve the interface. Users didn’t have to load pages constantly and could add tags and categories without leaving the post editor.
Trademark officially filed in 2006
Mullenweg’s company Automattic registered WordPress as a trademark on March 1, 2006. One-click updates, shortcodes, and built-in plugin installation were added in 2008 when the web design firm Happy Cog joined the project.
Web developer Syed Balkhi launched WPBeginner in 2009. He wanted his clients to be able to maintain their websites themselves.
Guaranteed growth
Automattic transferred ownership of the logo and trademark to the WordPress Foundation in 2010. This guaranteed that the system would always grow and never be dependent on developers or a company. WordPress 3.0 was released later that year. It featured custom backgrounds and post types, menus, headers, improved tailored taxonomies, and contextual help on admin screens.
WordPress becomes the most popular CMS
WordPress added its admin bar and post formats in 2011. Theme previews and theme customizers were introduced in 2012. They helped users preview themes and create image galleries.
WordPress’s automatic updates feature came with version 3.7 in 2013. Google Chrome has a similar feature. At this time, WordPress was the most popular CMS globally.
WordPress 3.8 was introduced in December 2013. It featured a new admin interface, MP6. It was aimed at improving user experience on any screen size or device. Version 3.9 came in 2014. You could now drag and drop images right into the post editor.
Three new versions were released in 2015: 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4. These releases focused on emoji support, better localization, ways to customize themes, and setting the infrastructure for the WordPress REST API. Notably, Automattic acquired WooCommerce, the well-known eCommerce plugin, that same year.
2016-2018: Versions 4.5-5.0
Versions 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7 involved streamlined updates for themes and plugins, a custom CSS feature, and the ability to recover content using browser storage. The system actively supported HTTPs by the end of 2016.
With releases 4.8 and 4.9, you could use new widgets to add video, audio, rich text, images, gallery, and HTML. They formed the basis of the block editor, which appeared under the name of Gutenberg in 2018.
The Site Health project
With versions 5.1 and 5.2 in 2019, the Site Health project would send messages when it detected an older PHP version. It also helped prevent the notorious White Screen of Death by letting users log in securely even if a critical error occurred.
The pandemic and beyond
With the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, WordPress events all over the world were canceled and moved online. Developments continued, and versions 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6 were released. The two subsequent versions involved a new template feature and a few universal blocks to create site-wide templates. Full-site editing came with version 6.2 last year. Developers added a new template browsing feature where anyone could create custom layouts without knowing how to code. Version 6.4 was released at the end of last year.
What’s next?
WordPress is constantly developing to address the needs of its roughly one billion users worldwide. The system will likely continue to inspire people globally to build beautiful websites.