Happy Birthday WordPress

Our little baby is turning 5! WordPress has come a long way in five years, from a little snippet of code to a full fledged blogging and CMS system!

Yes, WordPress is going into kindergarten, and boy it’s come a long way. I’ve only known WordPress for about two years, and even in that short while it’s gone through so many permutations. The constant effort to improve WordPress, while at the same time simplify, is tribute to the fantastic energy and innovative spirit of the Automattic team.

Let’s reminisce a bit, shall we?

  • Remember when WordPress added the Pages feature? That was just groundbreaking.
  • Remember when WordPress allowed us to easily set one of our Pages as the home page? That was a huge step in taking WordPress from “just” a blogging platform to a handy CMS system.
  • Remember when tags became part of WordPress? How much easier our lives became, how much more SEO friendly WordPress became.
  • Remember when WordPress redesigned the admin, and then redesigned it again?
  • Remember when WordPress launched their Publisher blog?
  • Remember when WordPress was translated into Kazakh?
  • Remember when WordPress started selling their cobalt blue no-tipping mug?
  • Remember when the first WordCamp took place in San Francisco, and the first major non-US WordCamp took place in Israel (and Lorelle joined us)?

If you’re in the San Francisco, make sure to go the official WordPress party. The Israeli WordPress community is trying to set something up too, so we’ll see if they manage to get anything together in such short notice.

Ah, good times, good times. May we have many more years of WordPress goodness, and congratulations to Matt and the whole team for taking a tiny bit of code and bringing it to where it is today!

Happy Birthday! Mazal tov!

Update: Ran Yaniv Hartstein, the guy in charge of WordPress’ Hebrew translation, has written a fantastic post that goes through the various changes made to WordPress since it started out as version 0.7, complete with screenshots. He even takes a look at the differences between b2/cafelog and WordPress. It’s in Hebrew, but I think even non-Hebrew speakers will get a sense of the changes with the screenshots. Check it out!