WordPress

What WordPress is

WordPress is free, open-source software for building and running websites. It is a content management system (CMS): a program that keeps your pages, posts and images in a database and lets you edit them in a web browser instead of editing code files by hand.¹

Open source means the code is published and anyone may use and change it. WordPress is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (GPLv2 or later), and the project lists four freedoms that come with it: to run the program for any purpose, to study and change it, to redistribute it, and to share modified copies.¹

The software is written in PHP, a programming language that runs on the web server, and stores content in a MySQL or MariaDB database.²

Two different things carry the name. WordPress.org is the home of the open-source project, where anyone can download the software and install it on their own web hosting. WordPress.com is a commercial service, run by the company Automattic, that hosts WordPress sites for you.³

Both use the same core software. WordPress.com’s own help page puts the main difference simply: WordPress.com includes managed hosting, while with WordPress.org you find and manage your own.³

As of October 22, 2026, the web survey company W3Techs detected WordPress on 39.6% of all websites and on 58.3% of the websites whose CMS it could identify.⁴

Origins: b2/cafelog and the 2003 fork

WordPress grew out of an earlier blogging program called b2/cafelog. Its author, Michel Valdrighi, was blogging from Corsica and began building b2 in June 2001 as a PHP and MySQL alternative to the hosted service Blogger and the Greymatter script.⁵

Valdrighi released the first version of b2 at cafelog.com in mid-2001. He stopped posting in late 2002, and by March 2003 users on the cafelog forums were asking where he had gone. The project had no lead developer.⁵

On January 24, 2003, Matt Mullenweg, a b2 user, published a blog post titled “The Blogging Software Dilemma.” He pointed out that because b2 was released under the GPL, he could take its code and start a fork, meaning a new project that begins from a copy of another project’s code.⁶

The next day a developer named Mike Little replied in the comments: “If you’re serious about forking b2 I would be interested in contributing.”⁶ The project’s official history book describes Little as a programmer from Stockport with nearly twenty years of experience.⁷

According to the same book, Mullenweg created a new branch of b2 on SourceForge, a free code-hosting site, on April 1, 2003 and named it WordPress. The name was suggested by his friend Christine Tremoulet.⁷

The first release was announced on May 27, 2003 in a post titled “WordPress Now Available.”⁸ The official history page lists it as version 0.7.⁹

That first release added automatic curly quotes, a link manager for blogrolls, hand-written excerpts and new default templates built with standards-based XHTML and CSS. It was free under the GPL.⁸

WordPress.org credits Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg as the two people who created the fork.¹ In August 2026 Mullenweg wrote that Valdrighi’s code and design set the path that WordPress later followed.¹⁰

From blog tool to content management system (2004 to 2016)

Version 1.0 came out on January 3, 2004. It added search-engine-friendly permalinks (readable web addresses such as /category/name instead of ID numbers), multiple categories per post, comment moderation, and import tools for rival software including Blogger, Movable Type and b2.¹¹

The project says its release names have been inspired by jazz artists. Version 1.0 was “Miles.”⁹

Version 1.5, released on February 17, 2005, added Pages, for content that sits outside the stream of blog posts, such as an About page. It also made themes more flexible by splitting headers, footers and sidebars into separate template files.¹²

The same release shipped Kubrick, a default theme designed by Michael Heilemann, as a starting point for people who did not want to build a theme from scratch.¹²

Version 2.0 “Duke,” released on December 31, 2005, redesigned the admin area. It added a WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) editor, an inline uploader for images, audio and video, post previews, and user roles such as administrator, editor and contributor.¹³

WordPress 2.0 also used AJAX-style techniques, so that deleting a comment or a category no longer reloaded the whole page. It bundled the Akismet anti-spam plugin and a database backup plugin.¹³

In the same month, December 2005, Automattic launched as a company to run the hosted service WordPress.com and Akismet. It started with four employees.¹⁴

Version 3.0 “Thelonious,” released on June 17, 2010, merged WordPress MU, a separate multi-user edition, into the main software. One installation could now run a single blog or a large network of sites.¹⁵

WordPress 3.0 also gave developers tools for custom post types and custom taxonomies. These let a site store things such as products, property listings or events as their own kinds of content, with their own categories. The release added a menu editor and a new default theme, Twenty Ten.¹⁵

With pages, custom content types, menus and multisite in place, WordPress could run business sites, catalogs and directories, not only blogs.

Version 4.7 “Vaughan,” released on December 6, 2016, added REST API content endpoints for posts, comments, users, terms, metadata and settings.¹⁶ An API (application programming interface) is a defined way for one program to talk to another; here it lets apps and other websites read and change a WordPress site’s content in a standard, machine-readable format.¹⁶

The REST API made it practical to use WordPress as a “headless” CMS, where WordPress stores the content and a separate front end, such as a mobile app or a JavaScript site, displays it. Version 4.7 also shipped Twenty Seventeen, a default theme aimed at business sites, with video headers and a front page built from several sections.¹⁶

Updates and security

A self-hosted WordPress site runs on a server its owner controls, so the project cannot patch it directly. Version 3.7 “Basie,” released on October 24, 2013, let most sites install maintenance and security releases automatically in the background, without anyone logging in to click “update.”¹⁷

Version 5.5 “Eckstine,” released on August 11, 2020, let administrators switch on automatic updates for each plugin and theme. The same release added a built-in XML sitemap (a file that lists a site’s pages for search engines) and lazy-loading, which waits to load an image until it is about to scroll into view.¹⁸

WordPress.org says its security team includes more than 50 experts, among them lead developers and security researchers, and that it encourages responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities. Problems in plugins and themes are reported to their developers and the review teams rather than to the core team.¹⁹

The newest security release as of October 22, 2026 is 7.1.3, published on October 6, 2026. It fixed 7 security issues and 4 other bugs and was rolled out automatically to sites that support background updates.²⁰

The 7.1.3 fixes included a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw on the Comments admin screen and an SQL injection in the export tool.²⁰ Cross-site scripting lets an attacker run their own script in another person’s browser; SQL injection tricks a site into running database commands it should not.

Some risks sit underneath WordPress itself. On October 21, 2026, after critical flaws in the PHP language were disclosed (see PHP2Shell), WordPress.org told site owners to check with their host for PHP updates. It said no WordPress update was needed for these issues, and that PHP versions older than 8.2 no longer receive security fixes.²¹

The block editor era (2018 to today)

WordPress 5.0 “Bebo,” released on December 6, 2018, made a block-based editor the default; the classic editor stayed available as a plugin. Each paragraph, image, heading or embedded video became a separate block that can be inserted, moved and styled on its own.²²

The new editor was developed under the code name Gutenberg.²³ WordPress 5.0 shipped with Twenty Nineteen, a default theme built to match the editor so that content looks much the same while editing as it does on the live site.²²

The block approach then spread from single posts to whole sites. WordPress 5.9 “Joséphine,” released on January 25, 2022, introduced full site editing, which lets owners change headers, footers and page templates with blocks inside the admin area.²⁴

WordPress 5.9 also introduced block themes, whose colors, fonts, templates and image filters are managed in the Site Editor. Twenty Twenty-Two was the first default block theme.²⁴

Later releases filled in the tools that site builders had relied on plugins for. WordPress 6.0 “Arturo” arrived on May 24, 2022.⁹ WordPress 6.5 “Regina,” released on April 2, 2024, added a Font Library for adding and removing typefaces without code, the Interactivity API for interactive blocks, and plugin dependencies, so a plugin can declare which other plugins it needs.²⁵

WordPress 6.9 “Gene,” released on December 2, 2025, added Notes, which attach review comments to individual blocks, and extended the command palette across the whole dashboard. It also introduced the Abilities API, a standardized, machine-readable permissions system meant for AI-powered and automated workflows.²⁶

WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong,” released on May 20, 2026, added an AI Client to the core software: a built-in way for WordPress and plugins to connect to generative AI models, managed from a new Connectors screen. An optional AI plugin covers tasks such as image generation and alt text.²⁷

The 7.0 release post said the version “marks the start of a new era.” It also refreshed the admin color scheme and added a Command Palette shortcut, a font management page, and new blocks for galleries, breadcrumbs and icons.²⁷

WordPress 7.1 “Mary Lou,” released on August 19, 2026, added responsive styling, so a block can look different on phones, tablets and desktops without custom CSS. It also brought a new media editor, notes that can mention collaborators, in-browser image processing with AVIF and HEIC support, and Playlist and Tabs blocks.²⁸

The release archive lists 7.1.3 as the latest version as of October 22, 2026.²⁹ WordPress 7.2 Beta 1 was published on October 20, 2026, with the final release planned for December 8, 2026.³⁰

Features being tested for 7.2 include more responsive controls for layout and images, text shadow settings, a dashboard widget called “On This Day,” and a Secrets API for storing credentials such as API keys.³⁰

Selected releases

How WordPress works

When a visitor requests a page, the web server runs WordPress’s PHP code. The code reads the content from the database, places it into the active theme’s templates, and sends the finished HTML page to the visitor’s browser.

The look of a site comes from its theme, and extra features come from plugins. As of October 22, 2026, the WordPress.org plugin directory advertised over 76,000 free plugins.³¹

The official theme directory showed a count of 8,723 themes on the same day, while its headline promised “over 15,000 free themes,” so the two figures on that page do not agree.³² Commercial themes and plugins are also sold outside the directory.

Inside the admin area, often called the dashboard, each account has a role. Since version 2.0, roles such as administrator, editor and contributor decide who can publish, edit or only draft content.¹³ Since version 3.0, a single installation can also run a network of many sites, a setup known as multisite.¹⁵

Any WordPress site can be migrated to or from WordPress.com. Self-hosting also lets owners make changes to the PHP environment and add complex custom code that may not be possible on WordPress.com.³

WordPress.org recommends a server with PHP 8.3 or greater, MySQL 8.0 or greater (or MariaDB 10.11 or greater), and HTTPS support. It names Apache and Nginx as the recommended web servers.²

The same page says WordPress can still run on PHP 7.4 and newer, but warns that those older versions are end-of-life and may expose a site to security vulnerabilities.²

The project’s position is that plugins and themes are derivative works of WordPress and therefore inherit the GPL. Its license page also acknowledges “some legal grey area” over what counts as a derivative work.³³

WordPress sets accessibility rules for its own code. Code in WordPress core, WordPress.org websites and official plugins is expected to meet WCAG 2.2 at Level AA.³⁴

WordPress.org and WordPress.com

The two names are often confused because they share the software and the brand. The table below summarizes how they differ, based on each side’s official pages.

WordPress.com’s free plan has 1 GB of storage, uses a WordPress.com subdomain and shows WordPress.com ads to visitors. The Personal plan cost $4 a month billed annually ($9 billed monthly) when checked on October 18, 2026.³⁶

The Premium plan cost $8 a month billed annually and the Commerce plan, which adds full WooCommerce store tools, cost $45 a month billed annually at the same check.³⁶

WordPress.com’s Business plan ($25 a month billed annually at that check) adds SFTP and SSH access, the kind of server access a self-hosted owner has by default.³⁶

Moving between the two is possible. WordPress.com’s export tool creates an XML file of posts, pages and comments with links to media, but it does not include the media files, theme or plugins; a full backup download needs the Business or Commerce plan.³⁷

In practice, WordPress.com behaves like a hosted website builder that happens to run WordPress, while WordPress.org is software you run yourself.

Market share

W3Techs reported on October 22, 2026 that WordPress was used by 39.6% of all websites and held 58.3% of the market among sites with a known CMS.⁴

The same survey found that 32.1% of websites used no CMS it could detect. The next largest systems were Shopify (5.3% of all websites), Wix (4.2%) and Squarespace (2.4%).³⁸

The older open-source CMSs Joomla and Drupal stood at 1.1% and 0.6% of all websites in that survey.³⁸

Most WordPress sites already run the newest major version. W3Techs found that 66.7% of WordPress sites ran version 7 and 26.4% ran version 6 as of October 22, 2026.⁴

Automattic’s company page uses a rounder figure, describing its founding product as powering “over 40%” of all websites.³⁵ Survey numbers move slightly from week to week, so any share should be read with its date and source.

Governance, trademarks and disputes

The WordPress software is built by a community of contributors around the world.¹ The WordPress Foundation, a charitable 501(c)(3) nonprofit started by Mullenweg, is responsible for protecting the WordPress and WordCamp trademarks.³⁹

The foundation was launched in January 2010, and Automattic transferred the trademarks to it in September of that year, according to the project’s history book.⁴⁰

Mullenweg describes himself as a founding developer of WordPress and the chair of the Automattic board, and he sits on the board of the WordPress Foundation.⁴¹ Since 2006 WordPress has held an annual keynote called the State of the Word.⁹

Automattic reports 1,394 staff. Its products include WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack and Tumblr.³⁵

Much of the community meets in person at WordCamps, locally organized conferences about WordPress. The first was held in San Francisco in 2006, and WordCamp Central lists 1,517 WordPress events in 422 cities across 72 countries as of October 22, 2026.⁴²

The WP Engine dispute

In September 2024 a public dispute broke out between Automattic and WP Engine, a managed WordPress hosting company. On September 21, 2024, Mullenweg published a post on WordPress.org titled “WP Engine is not WordPress,” arguing that the company confused customers and needed a trademark license.⁴³

On September 25, 2024, WordPress.org announced that WP Engine no longer had free access to its resources, such as the plugin and theme directories and update services.⁴⁴

On October 2, 2024, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg in federal court.⁴⁵

On October 12, 2024, WordPress.org forked WP Engine’s Advanced Custom Fields plugin into a new plugin called Secure Custom Fields, citing point 18 of its plugin directory guidelines and saying the change fixed a security problem and removed commercial upsells.⁴⁶

On December 10, 2024 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (case 24-cv-06917) granted WP Engine a preliminary injunction, a temporary order that applies while a case continues. It required the defendants to restore WP Engine’s access to wordpress.org as it stood on September 20, 2024, and barred them from interfering with WP Engine’s control of its plugins.⁴⁷

On September 24, 2026 the court ruled on motions to dismiss. It let WP Engine’s antitrust claims proceed and dismissed its Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim. It also denied most of WP Engine’s motion to dismiss the counterclaims brought by Automattic, Mullenweg, the WordPress Foundation and WooCommerce.⁴⁸

The same order found that Automattic and Mullenweg were “neither owners nor registrants of the marks at issue,” so it dismissed the trademark counterclaims to the extent those two sought to bring them in their own right. A ruling on motions to dismiss decides which claims may continue, not who wins.⁴⁸

WP Engine calls the counterclaims baseless and says its use of the WordPress name is fair use.⁴⁵ Automattic’s side of the argument is set out in the September 2024 WordPress.org post.⁴³

Working with other open-source CMS projects

WordPress is a member of the Open Website Alliance, which brings together the community organizations behind Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3 and WordPress to advocate for open source.⁴⁹

On September 21, 2026, Mary Hubbard announced that she had become the alliance’s president, representing the WordPress Foundation in a role that rotates among members.⁴⁹

Timeline

1. October 20, 2026WordPress 7.2 Beta 1 released; final 7.2 planned for December 8, 2026³⁰
2. October 6, 2026WordPress 7.1.3 fixes 7 security issues and 4 bugs²⁰
3. September 24, 2026Court lets WP Engine's antitrust claims and most counterclaims against WP Engine proceed⁴⁸
4. September 21, 2026WordPress Foundation takes the Open Website Alliance presidency⁴⁹
5. August 19, 2026WordPress 7.1 "Mary Lou" adds responsive styling and a new media editor²⁸
6. May 20, 2026WordPress 7.0 "Armstrong" adds an AI Client to core²⁷
7. December 10, 2024Court grants WP Engine a preliminary injunction against Automattic⁴⁷
8. October 2, 2024WP Engine sues Automattic and Matt Mullenweg⁴⁵
9. January 25, 2022WordPress 5.9 "Joséphine" introduces full site editing and block themes²⁴
10. August 11, 2020WordPress 5.5 adds plugin and theme auto-updates and XML sitemaps¹⁸
11. December 6, 2018WordPress 5.0 "Bebo" launches the block editor (Gutenberg)²²
12. October 24, 2013WordPress 3.7 "Basie" introduces automatic background updates¹⁷
13. June 17, 2010WordPress 3.0 "Thelonious" merges WordPress MU and adds custom post types¹⁵
14. January 2010WordPress Foundation launched⁴⁰
15. December 31, 2005WordPress 2.0 "Duke" adds a WYSIWYG editor and user roles¹³
16. December 2005Automattic launches to run WordPress.com and Akismet¹⁴
17. February 17, 2005WordPress 1.5 adds Pages and a new theme system¹²
18. January 3, 2004WordPress 1.0 released¹¹
19. May 27, 2003First WordPress release (0.7) announced⁸
20. January 24, 2003Matt Mullenweg proposes forking b2/cafelog⁶

What it means for your website

See also

• Matt Mullenweg (coming soon)
• PHP
• MySQL
• Drupal
• Website builder (coming soon)
• WordPress review
• WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
• Cms

References

1. About WordPress. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
2. Requirements. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
3. WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org. WordPress.com. accessed October 22, 2026.
4. Usage statistics and market share of WordPress. W3Techs. 2026-10-22. accessed October 22, 2026.
5. The Only Blogger in Corsica (Milestones: The History of WordPress). WordPress.org. 2015-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
6. The Blogging Software Dilemma. Matt Mullenweg (ma.tt). 2003-01-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
7. The Blogging Software Dilemma (Milestones: The History of WordPress). WordPress.org. 2015-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
8. WordPress Now Available. WordPress.org News. 2003-05-27. accessed October 22, 2026.
9. History of WordPress. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
10. Michel the GOAT. Matt Mullenweg (ma.tt). 2026-08-04. accessed October 22, 2026.
11. WordPress 1.0. WordPress.org News. 2004-01-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
12. Announcing WordPress 1.5. WordPress.org News. 2005-02-17. accessed October 22, 2026.
13. WordPress 2. WordPress.org News. 2005-12-31. accessed October 22, 2026.
14. Automattic (Milestones: The History of WordPress). WordPress.org. 2015-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
15. WordPress 3.0 Thelonious. WordPress.org News. 2010-06-17. accessed October 22, 2026.
16. WordPress 4.7 "Vaughan". WordPress.org News. 2016-12-06. accessed October 22, 2026.
17. WordPress 3.7 "Basie". WordPress.org News. 2013-10-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
18. WordPress 5.5 "Eckstine". WordPress.org News. 2020-08-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
19. Security. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
20. WordPress 7.1.3 Maintenance and Security Release. WordPress.org News. 2026-10-06. accessed October 22, 2026.
21. Critical PHP Security Release. WordPress.org News. 2026-10-21. accessed October 22, 2026.
22. WordPress 5.0 "Bebo". WordPress.org News. 2018-12-06. accessed October 22, 2026.
23. Gutenberg. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
24. WordPress 5.9 "Josephine". WordPress.org News. 2022-01-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
25. WordPress 6.5 "Regina". WordPress.org News. 2024-04-02. accessed October 22, 2026.
26. WordPress 6.9 "Gene". WordPress.org News. 2025-12-02. accessed October 22, 2026.
27. WordPress 7.0 "Armstrong". WordPress.org News. 2026-05-20. accessed October 22, 2026.
28. WordPress 7.1 "Mary Lou". WordPress.org News. 2026-08-19. accessed October 22, 2026.
29. Releases. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
30. WordPress 7.2 Beta 1 is Ready for Download and Testing. WordPress.org News. 2026-10-20. accessed October 22, 2026.
31. Plugins directory. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
32. Themes directory. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
33. License. WordPress.org. accessed October 22, 2026.
34. Accessibility Coding Standards. WordPress Developer Resources. accessed October 22, 2026.
35. About Automattic. Automattic. accessed October 22, 2026.
36. Pricing. WordPress.com. accessed October 18, 2026.
37. Export your content to another blog or platform. WordPress.com. accessed October 2, 2026.
38. Usage statistics of content management systems. W3Techs. 2026-10-22. accessed October 22, 2026.
39. WordPress Foundation. WordPress Foundation. accessed October 22, 2026.
40. The WordPress Foundation (Milestones: The History of WordPress). WordPress.org. 2015-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
41. About. Matt Mullenweg (ma.tt). accessed October 22, 2026.
42. About WordCamp. WordCamp Central. accessed October 22, 2026.
43. WP Engine is not WordPress. WordPress.org News. 2024-09-21. accessed October 22, 2026.
44. WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org. WordPress.org News. 2024-09-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
45. Ensuring Stability and Security: WP Engine's Legal Actions Against Matt Mullenweg and Automattic. WP Engine. 2026-09-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
46. Secure Custom Fields. WordPress.org News. 2024-10-12. accessed October 22, 2026.
47. Order Re Motion for Preliminary Injunction, WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc., No. 24-cv-06917-AMO (N.D. Cal.). U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (copy hosted by DocumentCloud). 2024-12-10. accessed October 22, 2026.
48. Order Re Motions to Dismiss, WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc., No. 24-cv-06917-AMO (N.D. Cal.), Dkt. 410. U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (via CourtListener RECAP). 2026-09-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
49. WordPress Takes Its Turn Leading the Open Website Alliance. WordPress.org News. 2026-09-21. accessed October 22, 2026.
50. WordPress Hosting. SiteGround. accessed October 2, 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia. First published October 22, 2026. Last reviewed October 22, 2026. Every fact on this page is linked to a source we opened. Spotted an error? Write to [email protected].