20 Years of WordPress: A Community Celebration 2023

• May 27th marks two decades of the popular website builder and CMS, WordPress
• The community has access to events, merch, and commemorative content

WordPress has been hard at work in the build-up to its 20th anniversary, sharing various posts, music, merchandise, and events to engage with its dedicated community. This Saturday – May 27th 2023 – marks two decades since WordPress first launched.

Since the early noughties, WordPress has grown from a simple blogging tool to a platform that dominates the CMS market, leading the way and powering 43% of existing websites today. Over the years, various updates have been released, new page elements rolled out, companies acquired, and improvements made to the user experience.

For example, 2014 introduced the option to edit images inside the editor, and the Gutenberg block editor was released in 2018. More recently, WordPress 6.2 rolled out at the start of 2023.

Let’s take a look at how WordPress is celebrating 20 years…

Celebrate in Style

If you want to celebrate with WordPress, you can! Parties are being hosted worldwide, you can buy WordPress merch, or download online content – such as logos – for the occasion.

In addition to in-person events, there’s a #WP20 playlist on Spotify to listen to, and a page of Gutenberg-created art to browse via the Museum of Block Art’s website. Or, if you’d like to celebrate the anniversary by doing something – the Marketing Team has launched “From Blogs to Blocks” which gives WordPress-related prompts each day.

There will also be a commemorative book to mark the 20th anniversary – Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress. The book spans the last decade, from 2013-2023, and is a sequel of sorts to WordPress’ first book, Milestones – The Story of WordPress, which covers the platform’s first 10 years.

So, what’s next for WordPress in 2023? This year has already seen the release of WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” – which involves over 900 enhancements, including a new site editor to make the platform more accessible and beginner-friendly for those just starting out.

Whether you’re a long-time WordPress user or new to the platform, we’d love to hear what you think of the builder. Will you be celebrating this weekend?

More Information

• It’s birthday season! Squarespace also celebrates its 20th anniversary this spring, and the platform shared an interactive timeline to highlight its achievements over the last two decades.