Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Nov 20
WordPress Now Powers 25% of Top 10 Million Websites
Fascinating news out of W3Techs earlier this month that WordPress now powers over 25% of the Alexa top 10 million websites. The next closest content management systems (CMS) are Joomla at 2.8% and Drupal at 2.1%.
The full stats are found here:
http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all
And a quick view of the top of the chart shows more data:
Note the very top line - and this one is extremely important:
57.2% of the top 10 million sites do NOT use an identifiable CMS.
Either those sites use custom software or somehow strip off identification so that the tools W3Techs uses cannot detect the type of CMS that is being used by that site.
This leaves 42.8% of the top 10 million websites that DO use a CMS.
If you look at the chart:
- the grey bars indicate the CMS' percentage across all Alexa 10 million sites
- the green bars indicate the CMS' percentage within sites that use a CMS
So the net is:
- 25.1% of the top 10 million sites use WordPress
- Of the 42.8% of sites that use a CMS, 58.7% of those use WordPress
And of course all of this data is only on the Alexa Top 10 million sites. There are then millions more sites using various CMS' - and some % of those will be using WordPress.
Still, the Alexa Top 10 million is one set to use - and W3Techs has now been doing these measurements for years.
One interesting note out of the W3CTechs blog post about this milestone is what happens when you move from looking at the Top 10 million to the Top 1000:
When we split up all websites by traffic level, we see that WordPress is leading at all levels, but the market share among the top 1000 sites is significantly lower at 30.3%. Drupal (19.7%) and Adobe Experience Manager (11.8%) are the other dominant systems in that section. Note, however, that using a standard CMS is not very common among the top 1000 sites, more than 90% of them are custom developments.
The article also has some interesting stats on usage by language. It also has this note:
WordPress is not only the most popular CMS, it is also the fastest growing system: every 74 seconds a site within the top 10 million starts using WordPress. Compare this with Shopify, the second-fastest growing CMS, which is gaining a new site every 22 minutes.
WordPress' Matt Mullenweg chimed in with a post "Seventy-Five to Go" noting that the goal now was much of that remaining 75%, particularly the 57% who do not use any CMS right now.
He may be on to something there. If you look over at W3Techs historical yearly trends in CMS usage, you can see the rise of WordPress, but also the decline of "None" from 76.4% in 2011 to 57.2% most recently:
So does all this mean that you should ditch your other CMS' and move to WordPress? Or that you should use WordPress for your next project?
Not necessarily.
I'm a firm believer that you need to use the right tool for the right job and the choice of CMS can depend upon many factors related to your individual site and needs. And while I use WordPress as the CMS for almost all of my newer sites, I also use other platforms for other sites.
And... from a security point of view, I do like a diversity of different systems out there - and I like the fact that there is competition and choice among open source CMS'.
However, the report certainly shows the robust and continued growth in the WordPress platform and the strength of the overall WordPress ecosystem. And it bodes well for the future of WordPress.
Congratulations to the team at Automattic and all the MANY people contributing as part of the much broader WordPress ecosystem!
P.S. I first heard about this statistic on the WordPress Weekly podcast epidode 212. If you are interested in WordPress, I find this podcast useful.
P.P.S. There's an irony, of course, that I'm writing this on a blog hosted on TypePad... I keep thinking that some year I'll move it to WordPress, but the effort involved is huge...
Nov 18
Is There A WordPress Plugin That Adds Easy "Sign A Petition" Support?
Has anyone found a great plugin for WordPress that adds the easy ability for visitors to a site to "sign" a statement or position and have their name appear? If so, could you please share the info?
Here's what's going for me - I operate a site, www.openwsis2015.org, where there are multiple public statements published relating to Internet governance. We are actively seeking more signers/endorsements for both... and my process of adding people to the list of signatories is cumbersome and inefficient.
My Current Inefficient Process
Here's the process I go through when someone signs the recent Joint Statement on WSIS+10:
The whole copy/paste thing is what kills me.
- The person submits the signing form with their info.
- I receive an email with the person's information.
- I open up the WordPress admin interface and navigate to the TablePress page.
- I open up the appropriate table (organizations or individuals) for editing.
- I manually copy and paste the info from the email into the TablePress table.
- I save the table.
- The name now appears on the list of signatories.
The Process I Would Like To Have
Here's how I'd like it to go:
- The person submits the signing form with their info.
- I receive an email telling me there is a new signatory to moderate.
- I open up the WordPress admin interface and navigate to the TablePress page.
- I click a link in the email that brings me to the appropriate tab in the WordPress admin interface.
- I click on an "Approve" link in that admin window.
- The name now appears on the list of signatories.
Essentially what I'm looking for is something like the regular moderate Comments interface... only when I approve the submission it shows up in a table instead of as a comment to the page or post.
And I want it to be customizable in terms of what fields I use. These particular statements have the fields they do, but for the next time I do this I may want different fields.
My Search So Far
I searched through the WordPress plugin directory using the keyword "petition" but most of the plugins I found use external services.
I don't want that. I want a petition/statement page running on my own site without any dependencies on external services.
The YAWPP (Yet Another WordPress Petition) plugin looks interesting... but I'm concerned that it hasn't been updated in 2 years. That's a long time in the world of WordPress... and support requests don't seem to be being answered.
I've tried other search terms and I've done some brief searching of commercial plugins, too, and haven't yet found anything. I also thought that perhaps I need to look at something where people are signing up for an "event"... that then shows the list of people who have signed up. Perhaps some kind of event/meeting plugin could be repurposed this way.
And yes, I could probably kludge this together in some way by hacking away on a customized WordPress theme or something like that... but I don't have the time or interest in doing that.
So let me throw it out here... HAVE ANY OF YOU USED ANYTHING THAT WOULD DO WHAT I WANT?
Either free/open source or commercial... I'm interested in either.
Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks!
A Bonus Question - Logos?
You'll see at the bottom of the submission form that I say that organizations should send their logo to me via email. What I ideally want to do is have a third column on the Organizations table where I can display a standard size thumbnail of the logos of the various organizations.
Ideally I'd love it if the form interface could allow someone to upload a logo which, again, could just be approved as part of the moderation process.
But that's the ideal world... right now I'd take just getting the names in there so that I can avoid the whole copy/paste in email thing. :-)
Speaking of that, a bunch of signatories came in overnight... time to go do some copy/pasting...
Nov 16
For Immediate Release #9: Media Relations? There’s An App For That
Welcome to episode #9 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Nora Ganim-Barnes, who leads the annual research into social media use among the Fortune and Inc. 500 for the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; Peter Himler, founder of Flatiron Communications in New York; and Ron Ploof, former head of social media for Epson, the podcaster behind Griddlecakes Radio, and creator of the StoryHow Pitch Deck.
On the show this week, we shared our views on the following topics:
- The good and bad of social media in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris
- The decline of blogging among the Fortune 500, and the adoption of Glassdoor.com as a business social media channel
- The kinds of things PR practitioners need to know in order to thrive in today’s digital/online environment
- How the University of Missouri handled protests and the resignations of its president and chancellor
- UPitch, the new app touted as “Tindr for media relations” — will journalists use it?
- A new report shows the financial impact on publishers of ad-blocking software
- How readers reacted to The New York Times’ distribution of Google Cardboard Virtual Reality kits, and the VR native ads that accompanied the Times’ VR story on children refugees
- Starbucks’ strategy of staying virtually silent in the wake of a controversy over its 2015 holiday-themed cups
- Dan York’s report
Connect with this week’s panelists at @NoraBarnes, @PeterHimler, and @RonPloof.
Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.
Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.
Join us next week for our 10th episode. Joining me on the panel will be PR educator and consultant Barbara Nixon, GaggleAMP founder and president Glenn Gaudet, and social media and PR consultant and trainer Philippe Borremans.
About this week’s panel
Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes earned a Ph.D. in Consumer Behavior from the University of Connecticut and is a Chancellor Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As Director of the Center for Marketing Research, Nora has provided services in brand and product development, research, promotion, and commercial television production to hundreds of clients. The Center serves as the primary link between the University and businesses in the region. Prominent members of the business community sit on the Center’s Advisory Board and interact with students through the projects conducted under her supervision. Nora has published over 125 articles in academic and professional journals and proceedings, and has contributed chapters to books. In addition she has supervised the writing of approximately 200 business monographs. She is a frequent presenter, session chair and track chair at academic conferences and sits on the review boards of the Health Marketing Quarterly, the Journal of Professional Services Marketing, and the Journal of Marketing Management.
Peter Himler is a veteran agency executive who has led the media practices at some of the more esteemed global firms including Edelman, Burson-Marsteller, Cohn & Wolfe and Hill & Knowlton. He left the big agency world ten years ago to form Flatiron Communications LLC to help established and emerging companies capitalize on the latest technologies and strategies taking hold in the communications industries. Today, Peter comfortably straddles the worlds of traditional PR, content marketing and digital communications, frequently lecturing and writing about the two on his blog and for Forbes.com. He also owns and edits a publication on Medium called “Adventures in Consumer Technology,” which now has 32,000 followers. He maintains an active engagement in the social media graph, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, RebelMouse, and (far) too many others. He serves as president of the Publicity Club of New York and has advised Social Media Week and the Center for Communication. He sits on the Board of Advisors of the Communications & Media Studies Program at Tufts University, from which he holds a BA in Political Science and French.
Ron Ploof is a 25-year veteran of the high-tech electronics industry. His interest in social media began in 2005 when he launched one of the world’s first indie storytelling podcasts called, Griddlecakes Radio: Exploring the Lost Art of Audio Storytelling. He co-founded a social media consulting firm in 2008 and was the manager of social media for Epson America from 2012 to 2015. But his first love has always been to use storytelling as a communications vehicle. He’s produced an audio book about the American Revolution and written a job-skills book as a novel. His most recent project, The StoryHow™ PitchDeck, is a deck of playing cards that helps business people convert their ideas, messages, and presentations into memorable narratives.
The post FIR #9: Media Relations? There’s An App For That appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
Nov 16
TDYR 272 – Fix an iPhone 5s? Or Upgrade to 6s?
Were you an iPhone 5s user who upgraded to an iPhone 6s? What do you think? Are you happier with the 6s? Or do you wish you stayed with the 5s? This week I'm dealing with this question of what is admittedly a "first-world problem" of which way should I go... (and as I said in the episode "Get an Android!" is NOT the answer right now... :-) )
Nov 12
ISOC At IGF 2015, Day 4: Human Rights, IANA, WSIS+10, IXPs, Internet Governance and more
The final day of the 2015 Internet Governance Forum (IGF2015) promises to be another day packed full of great sessions, with our President/CEO Kathy Brown highlighting human rights and ISOC Board of Trustee member Narelle Clark participating in a session on the IANA stewardship transition. You can see our schedule of Internet Society-related sessions at:
Dan York
Nov 12
ISOC At IGF 2015, Day 3: Cybersecurity, Zero-rating, Death and the Internet and much more…
Day 3 of the 2015 Internet Governance Forum (IGF2015) continues the rapid pace of Internet Society activity, beginning with a main session panel on cybersecurity with ISOC Board of Trustees Chair Bob Hinden. You can see our schedule at:
Dan York
Nov 11
ISOC At IGF Day 2: ISOC Open Forum, IXPs, Encryption, IoT, IPv6 and more
Before diving into what's on the agenda of "Day 2" of the 2015 Internet Governance Forum (IGF2015) let me first note that yesterday we issued a news release about our President and CEO Kathy Brown's remarks at the IGF 2015 Opening Session:
We would encourage you all to take a look because those two themes of connecting the unconnected and ensuring trust are themes you are going to hear us talking about quite a bit over the next year! (And probably beyond!)
Dan York
Nov 10
Video Available of Kathy Brown’s Remarks at IGF 2015 High Level Leaders Meeting
Yesterday at the 2015 Internet Governance Forum (IGF2015) in Brazil, our President and CEO Kathy Brown gave an inspiring set of remarks in the High Level Leaders Meeting. Courtesy of some excellent production work by Joly MacFie of our ISOC New York Chapter syncing the audio and video, we're now able to provide you with a video recording of Kathy's remarks:
Dan York
Nov 10
ISOC At IGF2015, Day 1: WSIS+10, IXPs, Trust, Digital Economy, and the Opening Ceremony
Today is "Day 1" of the 2015 Internet Governance Forum (IGF2015) and this begins an incredibly packed schedule of many different simultaneous sessions, workshops, roundtables and other events. First, a quick reminder that all our Internet Society activities today can be found here:
https://www.internetsociety.org/igf2015/isoc-schedule#One
Also, please remember that remote participation is possible if you are not in Brazil - and please review our other blog posts about IGF2015 for background.
Dan York
