Despite The Drama WordPress Is Still Dominant
At This Years State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of the WordPress project had a lot to say.
On December 2nd, Matt Mullenweg present the 2025 State Of The Word presentation.
Of course nothing could go smoothly the connection to the live stream didn't work, but thank goodness they recorded it.
The SOTW revealed that WordPress is still the dominant CMS out there and much more.
43% of the web, 60% of the CMS market, 49.4% of the top 10,000 websites globally, and WooCommerce runs on 8.9% of all websites. Those are some strong stats.
I like what Matt Medeiros over at The WP Minute wrote about Matt Mullenweg:
For all of his faults and criticisms, I do believe he wants open source to win.
He has a desire to push people to publish and own their corner of the internet, and he doesn’t force funnel it to WordPress.com or Automattic products! If it were me, you better believe that I’d be telling you the best place to do this is using my products.
It’s hard for me to put words to it but I think it’s 80% wanting WordPress and open source to win, 20% how can Automattic become the commercial company behind it.
I believe this is true. But, sometimes I wonder what Mullenweg is thinking with these lawsuits against WP Engine, a big WordPress managed hosting provider, and the subsequent community bannings of well known WordPress contributors from contributing. (Most have been reinstated.)
Excited But Burned
Part of me is really excited to see where WordPress goes, especially in the world of Artificial Intelligence, but the other half of me has be burned by Mullenweg's antics with the law suit(s) against WP Engine and the strange structure of the WordPress Foundation. Clearly I'm not going anywhere, but Mullenweg has a lot to do to restore trust in the community.
Automattic, WordPress, & AI
I've tried Telex, Automattic's (Mullenweg's company) foray into AI and AI custom WordPress block building, and it's neat to a point. But part of me wonders where's the secret sauce. It just seems like it's something I can do with the main AI LLMs without the wrapper. I could be wrong, but that's just what I'm thinking right now.
But it is reassuring to hear from Mullenweg is that the integration of AI into WordPress is to supplement not replace the users.
Democratizing Publishing Around The World
What I'm most excited about is WordPress' continued efforts to democratize the web and make publishing accessible to people all over the World. And what's astonishing, according to Mullenweg, 56% of the WordPress-running Websites are non-English! Wow!
One of the core tenants of the WordPress Foundation and community is upholding the freedom to publish, including, build, learn, and participate.
I love this. And I love that the overall belief is Publishing Should Be Free!
What's more the idea of data portability both into and out of WordPress. That's a lot more than you can say for many of these closed content management systems.
Did you watch the SOTW? Most likely after the fact since the stream wasn't working. What were you big takeaways?
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The Latest From The Entrepreneur's Enigma Podcast
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Web Jawn
Kat Tenbarge
Not surprised. But not good.
Ashley Belanger
Good grief.
Sarah Huffman
This is great news for the Philly ecosystem and the startups in the Philly-Metro area.
Emma Roth
Oh the irony. The fact that they changed the name of the company to reflect the Metaverse and it was a huge miss is such a "doh" moment.
Andrew Hutchinson
Maybe support will actually work, because right now it sucks!
Frank Olivo
This makes sense. What this means is that you need to focus on reputation markers and schematic inferences more than general knowledge blog posts that the AI bots are just going to "borrow."
Matt G. Southern
I guess this is a good thing. But might actually lead to more trolling.
Duane Forrester
Good read on what moves from traditional to AI search.
Barry Schwartz
AI Mode will be dominant and will over take the normal search.\
Tianna MarinucciTraveler. Foodie. Writer.
A good primer on what Podcasting 2.0 is all about!
Laura
Great tips on how to SEO your podcast for reach and discovery.
Jennay Horn
LinkedIn is a great place to grow your B2B podcast. If you're not on the platform and active you should start.
Web Find
Roger Montti
This looks awesome and works great! It's worth signing up for a free Internet Archive account to have more archival privileges.
That's It For This Week! Keep Rocking It!
-Seth
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