World Wide WordPress: The service that powers much of the internet

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Insecure

Websites powered by the content management system (CMS) Wordpress have reportedly been under attack from malware that targets vulnerabilities in some of the content manager’s major plugins, which could have been going on for years.

World Wide WordPress

Although it's not a household name, WordPress likely plays a far bigger role in your internet experience than you might imagine. The open-source system, owned by Automattic — which also acquired Tumblr in 2019 — is the quiet workhorse behind many of your favorite websites, hosting, managing, and modifying more site content than any other single entity.

Back in 2012, a year that spawned all manner of online phenomena from Gangnam Style to Grumpy Cat, much of the online landscape was hand-coded by creators. Indeed, 71% of websites were using unmonitored CMSs, or none at all, compared to just 32% of sites that go without today. WordPress tapped into the idea that making websites should be easy, in a similar way to Shopify simplifying the process of setting up an online store.

WordPress's customizability, via plugins that anyone can make, has proved wildly popular, and sites built on WordPress now account for more than 40% of the web. But WordPress has greater ambitions. The king of website content wants to keep growing — Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg predicts that the system will extend its market share in the CMS space to 80-85% in the next decade.

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World Wide WordPress: The service that powers much of the internet
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