ManageWP has come a long way in the past two years, and the product we have produced is the culmination of an awful lot of hard work. But what is perhaps most amazing is the fact that everything you see is run by one single hardworking WordPress installation.
Tens of thousands of people flock to the managewp.com domain on a monthly basis to check out the website, read the blog, and of course use the tool itself – and just one WordPress installation is running the whole show.
It’s a Brave New World Out There
The capabilities of WordPress are a testament to the scalability that the internet allows. Take WordPress.com for example, which is essentially a single installation of multisite. That’s 32 million blogs folks – all running one a single installation of WordPress (albeit across many servers and databases).
As a WordPress user, you should pinch yourself on occasion. You are using a completely free open source Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to create websites with just a few clicks. If you are not technically gifted in website design, WordPress allows you to do something that you could not otherwise do. If you are technically gifted, you use WordPress because it saves you an enormous amount of time and energy in doing otherwise complicated tasks. Everyone’s a winner.
Scope and Scale
In August 2011 it was estimated that around 22% of all new websites in the USA run on WordPress. It is the CMS of choice for nearly 15% of the world’s top 100 websites (source). In a nutshell, it forms the foundations of some of the most trafficked blogs in the world. Without wanting to sound overly dramatic, a huge proportion of the internet runs on WordPress.
And why not? If you are new to our favorite CMS, you may not grasp the potential power that you have in your hands. In terms of web development, WordPress provides you with a means by which you can accomplish perhaps anything you set your mind to.
Functionality in Abundance
WordPress alone is a wonderful CMS, but its true power lies in its almost unlimited extensibility. Every single month sees the release of tens of new themes and plugins. Almost every taste and requirement is catered for – whether you want a Tumblr-style theme (after all, why use Tumblr when WordPress can do the same thing?), corporate themes, photographer themes or a professional-looking design template for your business.
If themes give your WordPress site a new coat of paint, plugins soup up the engine. The potential for what you can do is nearly limitless. Where to start – how about building a fully-featured eCommerce site? Contact forms at the click of a button? Instant social sharing?
If you have an idea that you think could extend the functionality of your site, someone has probably already developed a plugin that gets the job done. If you want some examples of the very best, just check out our Themes & Plugins section.
The Competition
Over the past 9 years, WordPress has steadily climbed to dominance. It only takes a quick search on Google Trends to recognize its current dominance compared to competitors past and present:
The reasons for its ascendancy are varied. It is free (always a good start). It is open source. It is powerful. For those amongst us who are not expert coders (i.e. the majority), it is user-friendly and intuitive.
In short, WordPress somehow combines power and simplicity without it seeming like an unbearable compromise.
The Community
WordPress is now so big, it seems to be an unstoppable machine. The WordPress community is huge and influential, and the snowball of themes and plugins available today started rolling many years ago. Even if a technically “better” CMS popped up tomorrow, it wouldn’t be able to compete with the potential added style and functionality that is available to WordPress users.
But that’s not all. The support system (for what we must remind ourselves is an open source product) is truly outstanding. Chances are that if you come across a bug, someone already has before you, and somebody else is working on a fix. Interested in taking a look at what is currently being worked on? Just check out the WordPress Trac for the latest bug fix and update news.
There are an awful lot of very talented people working on making WordPress an even better product.
What Does This All Mean For ManageWP?
One thing is for sure – we jumped on the right bandwagon. ManageWP is of course a tool that has been tailor made for the most popular CMS in the world, and with good reason. As explained above, it is the most powerful and versatile product available, and it is completely free.
In a short space of time, ManageWP has become the best solution for owners of multiple WordPress sites. But we’re only just getting started – we have big plans for the future.
In 2002, WordPress was but a glint in Matt Mullenweg’s eye, and now it is the world’s most popular CMS. As for us? We’re just getting started.
Shital Bhalani
I’ve been using wordpress for years, but it wasn’t until I started following css-tricks that I understood the full power of it. Now, when I build a site, I install a fresh copy of wordpress, and delete all the default themes and default plugins (except for akismet).
The 3 minutes it takes to install wordpress gives me an intricate user system that can handle passwords, user levels, etc. easily and securely . . . all for 3 minutes worth of effort. Then I install the “Types” plugin to allow me to create custom post types and fields super fast.
So far that puts me less than 30 minutes into development and I’ve already got a custom database, a user management system that handles passwords, resetting them, “forgetting” them, etc., and I’ve already got a pretty robust back end management system for my client and the ability to have visitors post and reply to comments, pages and post if I want to. Not bad for 30 minutes worth of work.
The rest of the time is spent building a theme for the site. Super fast, and super easy development. I’m a php guy, so creating a custom template is pretty painless. It’s very easy to tap into the wordpress API.