WordPress began in 2003 as a fork of b2\/cafelog, a blogging tool whose original developer had stopped working on it. Matt Mullenweg, then a college student in Houston, wanted to keep it alive. He teamed up with developer Mike Little, and the first release came in May 2003. A friend, Christine Tremoulet, suggested the name. Because b2 was licensed under the GPL, forking it was legal, and WordPress took the same license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early WordPress was just blogging software. Plugins, themes and a very low barrier to entry turned it into a general-purpose content management system. Later milestones include the Gutenberg block editor in 2018 and the move toward full-site editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mullenweg dropped out of college to work on WordPress full time. He founded Automattic in 2005 to build commercial services around it, and he remains its CEO. In 2010 he put the WordPress trademark into the nonprofit WordPress Foundation. That arrangement matters later in this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WordPress is free to download, modify and redistribute under the GPL. Thousands of volunteers and company-sponsored contributors build it, and an ecosystem of tens of thousands of free plugins and themes surrounds it. Automattic and other companies sponsor contributors through the \u201cFive for the Future\u201d pledge, which asks businesses to dedicate about 5% of their resources to the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adoption is huge but has slipped a little. Depending on the month, W3Techs put WordPress at 40.2% of all websites as of October 1, 2026, down from 43% in January 2026. Among sites that use a known CMS, its share is roughly 60%. Most of the lost share has gone to sites with no detectable CMS, plus hosted builders like Shopify and Wix. eseospace<\/a>barn2<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The WordPress software earns nothing. The money comes from companies built around it, mainly Automattic, which is privately held and does not publish audited financials. Outside revenue estimates vary widely and are unreliable. Its revenue sources include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Automattic was valued at about $7.5 billion in its 2021 funding round. wishpond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The WordPress Foundation is a separate nonprofit, funded by donations and sponsorships, that holds the trademark and supports the community. It is not the same thing as Automattic. Many other businesses, including hosts, agencies and plugin and theme sellers, make money from WordPress without paying Automattic anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The open-source and commercial sides collided in September 2024. Mullenweg publicly criticized WP Engine, a large rival host, for profiting from WordPress without contributing enough. Automattic sent a cease-and-desist letter over use of the WordPress trademark, and Mullenweg banned WP Engine and its users from WordPress.org resources. WP Engine sued in October 2024, alleging extortion and abuse of power. A federal judge later ordered Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine\u2019s access, and the case, along with a related customer class action, was still being fought through amended complaints as of my latest search. Automattic calls the claims meritless. ppc<\/a>websitebuilderexpert<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The dispute raised a real question for open-source projects: how far can a company that controls the trademark, the website and the infrastructure go in using that control commercially?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources: TechRadar<\/a>, TechCrunch<\/a>, W3Techs-based summary<\/a>, usagepricing.com<\/a>, Wishpond<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Origins WordPress began in 2003 as a fork of b2\/cafelog, a blogging tool whose original developer had stopped working on it. Matt Mullenweg, then a college student in Houston, wanted to keep it alive. He teamed up with developer Mike Little, and the first release came in May 2003. A friend, Christine Tremoulet, suggested the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2361,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359\/revisions\/2361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How It Makes Money<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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A Fault Line: The WP Engine Dispute<\/h3>\n\n\n\n